Prisoner of Peace
by Kabochya
Summary: For all their training and skill, the Gundam pilots one and all are underage, minors as it were, and by law, minors go to school.
1. Prologue

I just finished the DVD collection of Gundam Wing, but upon dashingto my computer to see what fanfics are available, I had difficulty finding fics about what I was really interested in, namely, what happens _next_. I don't mean "D and H are dating and then there R problems LOL" or the like, I'm talking about real-life issues like careers and bills. And why does no one take into account the sheer notoriety and infamy that would follow them as former enemies of, well, _everyone_ at some point or another. This fic takes place a year or two after the war, and these soldiers are dealing with youthfulness, peers, settling in, and the not-so-normal attention of a generation taught to both hate and love them.

Prisoner of Peace

_People clap and camera's flash as the man on the podium speaks. Millions of viewers sit in front of their TV screens as the man makes way for a young woman, who has a speech of her own prepared. The crowd roars in approval once she is finished, and she graciously steps down. The news channels switch to their own reporters who voice their opinions with words like "stirring", "brilliant", and "long overdue". On the other side of the TV screen, most people respond with cheers or indifferent approval, but with many miles between them, a handful of youths question this decision, not for opposition of cost or a steadfastly held grudge, but for realization of how this could affect their own lives. _

Two months later, a similar scene is taking place in an earth school, except this crowd is hundreds, not thousands, and there is only one lone TV camera focused on the stage. The principal of this school has just been introduced, and he, like the entire student body which makes up the audience, is dressed stuffily in a formal out fit with the school patch on the left front pocket. He opens with his tried and true speech of the prestige of the school, the honor it is to be attending, respecting ones peers and teachers, respecting the school rules and grounds, and a word or two on school spirit and pride. By now most students have tuned him out, having heard this exact speech before (with the exception of the freshmen, but everyone hates freshmen anyway). But all faces still have the polite mask of interest, each and every one of them being the cultured (read: spoiled) rich who know the practice of manners.

Now the principle calls to introduce the faculty and counselors, and behind him the curtain on the right hand side pulls sideways, and the table-full of adults behind it stand one by one as they are introduced. The masks of a large number of students begin to fail, for the faculty look humorously stuffed behind that table, and they whisper about why the left hand curtain isn't working.

"And for my next announcement," the principle has a new tone, as excitement and smugness leak into his voice. "Most of you will have seen Vice Foreign Minister Dorlan's speech early this summer, and by now all of you should at least know the gist of it." He said this in a way that said that anyone who didn't know what he was talking about was an idiot, and not worthy of this school. "Under chapter 17 section 9 of the Recovery from War act, all soldiers are to be compensated in the form of education so that they may find steady jobs out side of military service. In light of this development and others," (the left-hand curtain proved it was not broken as it pulled slowly from the center stage) "I am proud to inform you that his school has been honored to accept among its pupils" (the curtain edged away from in front of one chair and then another and another, each chair occupied by an un-extraordinary looking teenager) "…the heroic and talented **_Gundam Pilots_**."

The principle swept his arm toward the five seated boys, his smile in place and his ear cocked to catch the applause he was expecting. However, the audience hall was completely silent, not even the polite applause the usually followed each section of his speech. Instead students stared gapingly at the young men before them, and the young men, each dressed in the gray and white guy's uniform, stared calmly back. Whispers broke out after a minute, to the dismay of the principle, who was still standing with his arm directed at the war hero's, the smile frozen in place and his eyes telling of his uncertainty. Finally, a high pitched shriek of excitement started a growing round of applause that reached deafening heights, that had the entire audience standing, and that was filled with cheers and whistles.

The principle called for order, thankful that his big announcement hadn't flopped, but the pilots made no obvious movements. They were all having combat flashbacks of avoiding attention and certain death. The uniforms of the students were easily comparable to the uniforms of soldiers.

"They're like an army." Wufei muttered just loud enough for the others to hear. He resisted the instinct to run away or start killing people, as his "enemy" stared up at him.

"You got that right." Said Duo.

"Hmm." Said Trowa.

"Maybe we're overreacting" Quatre tried to reason.

"This place is like a prison" Heero stated flatly. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."

"We can't just leave." Quatre lent his steady logic to the others. "This isn't some POW base that we can escape. All that's really keeping us here are all these new laws. And since we helped create the government that created the laws…" Quatre looked grim, as unpleasant thoughts roamed his brain. "We created this. We did this to ourselves."

"That Relena has a lot to answer for" grumbled Heero.


	2. War Council

War Council

Five boys were lined up along the wall out side the staff offices, in no particular order. All stared pointedly at anything other than the human beings passing through the halls, preferring to contemplate different articles of their new uniforms, which were expertly tailored, finely made, and extremely uncomfortable for those accustomed to the freedom of movement and practical nature of their own choice of dress. The pedestrian traffic slowed to a trickle, and all five would breathe a little bit easier when it had slowed to a stop, or when whatever the problem that had cropped up in the office was resolved, which ever came first.

"It just doesn't make sense" Trowa said suddenly.

"What doesn't?" Wufei wanted to know.

"Why us…why here?" Trowa struggled to organize his thoughts, "why, after all this time – what has it been now, almost a year- would they bother, would they go to all the trouble, of pulling us from our homes, our colonies, our families, our jobs, and send us to an earth school, a _private_ earth school, that must be costing the state thousands?

"It is the law that minors must go to school" Wufei answered "and it is not a new one either."

Heero butted in. "Even before the war, the colonies had their hands full and their minds on other things. Issues like the housing of orphans and keeping kids in school were pushed aside. Now that the war is over, old laws and customs are more prioritized."

"Especially the 'keeping kids in school' bit." Duo added his two cents worth. "Back home, there reached a point in time when everyone was so desperate for manual labor that even little kids were silently encouraged to help out and find jobs."

"There's a lot more going on here than child labor laws and keeping kids in school and off the streets." Gentle, soft spoken Quatre instantly had their attention, for they respected his views, and his ability to analyze a situation.

"First there's the political factor, and matters of public view." He looked down at his palms, and seemed to be ready to count off something. "Our involvement in The War to End All Wars was no secret, and many people may believe that they owe us, if not only a debt of gratitude, but a manner of honor, and may be monetary compensation for service as well. People are most familiar with man's action being only for self gain, and people as a whole may not understand that victory, and the completion of our goals, was all any of us ever wanted."

Each boy took a moment to reflect on the extremely materialistic society they had encountered upon trying to dwell among their fellow man.

"And like it or not, we're going down in history. We're probably figureheads or symbols to many people, although I'm not sure what we would represent. No smart politician would want us to fade into obscurity until they can figure out what to do with us; they'll want us within arms reach."

"That's still no reason for us to be attending a _foreign_ school." Trowa restated his question. "International boundaries still exist – and if we're such important symbols, wouldn't the governments of our own colonies want to keep us?"

Quatre thought for a minute, and then gave his reply. "We may never know for sure why we all ended up on the sphere instead of our respective colonies. It probably had some level of political debate over it. There are a few possible arguments. For one thing, if we are politically and publicly valuable, or if they really were trying to repay us in someway, then they might have sent us here simply because they're trying to give us a leg up by sending us all to a prestigious school.

"Did you see the camera?" Duo cut in once more. "I bet that our mugs were all over the evening news." He stretched into his trade mark position, hands behind his head, and leaning against the wall with his ankles crossed. "If that is any indication, this school is about to get a lot of publicity off of our backs."

"That may be exactly why they agreed to take us." Quatre's acknowledgement of Duo's genius observation skills made the long haired boy smirk to himself. "All available funds are being pumped into the war recovery act, and all sorts of similar civil functions. There's no way the government could justify wasting thousands on tuition and supplies on five people alone. This school may have agreed to waive entrance fees and donated room and board simply for the prospect that families world wide would be regularly bombarded with images of their school."

"You're forgetting that this place is already the foremost school on the planet. All sorts of rich and politically tied families send their kids here. They don't need any more publicity." Heero spoke in his usual monotone. "And you still haven't come up with a reason for our colonies and governments to want to get rid of us."

Quatre was not offended or put out by Heero's interruption or his attitude. Instead, he tried to lend a personal experience to aid his explanation. "When my oldest sisters were in high school, they attended the "most prestigious" school of the time, and institute somewhere in North America. But after a few years, some of my sisters started coming here instead. Prestige is a fashion trend, it comes and goes: this school may just be trying to hold onto its top billing a little while longer. And if you continue on that line of thinking, they may have more lasting goals in mind, i.e., going down in history as the _alma mater_ of yours truly and present company." Quatra read the faces of all his friends and could see what they all were thinking. He stopped all their comments by saying "it is true that Relena Peacecraft Dorlan attended this school at one time." The other four stepped down, their unspoken question answered. "But she eventually moved on to other things, with out even graduating. Besides, there were many other influential people in this war that attended other schools, and she is just one name among many. But a school that boasts not one, but five widely known graduates has a true claim to fame. Perhaps that is the answer to the political question as well." Here Quatra turned and addressed Heero directly. "If the school was desperate enough for the eternal spotlight, they may have used the universal language, a.k.a…"

"Money" Trowa, familiar with the circus's workings, and the business practice of paying for favors, caught on instantly. "A place like this is bound to have some extra funds stored away, and with all existing governments sending aid to damaged areas, everyone's a little short, and looking for ways to get something extra."

"We've been bought and sold" Wufei elaborated aloud. "Like cattle, or toys, or slaves."

"Or weapons." Heero added glumly.

"Let's not make any hasty judgments." Quatre cautioned. "Like I said, we simply don't know. This is all purely speculation." There was a moment of silence as each boy mentally catalogued this conversation as 'theory' instead of 'fact'.

"The only things we know for sure are the excuses they're giving." Duo murmured.

"The laws." Heero corrected.

"Laws about soldiers." Wufei said.

"Laws about children." Trowa said.

"The main one would be the 'education for veterans' movements. With the armies dismantling, that's a lot of men and women who are going to be unemployed. It's a smart move, politically speaking." Quatre once again had their undivided attention, as he tried to give them a glimpse into the heads of the people who were controlling all their lives. "Statistically, most petty crimes are done by people with out work. By giving veterans a degree, they not only give them a better chance at a good job and a substantial paycheck, but they also can let them trickle out gradually, so it's not as big of a shock to the economy. Also, since these are ex-soldiers, they don't want to risk them becoming unhappy with the ideas of total pacifism, and trying to start trouble."

The other four were nodding their heads in understanding, so Quatre continued. "Another group that the politicians are wary of is the appalling number of war orphans." Quatre risked a quick glance at his friends. Family was an uncharted territory between these five, mainly caused by the suspicious lack of it. "This is a generation who has been desensitized by the violence around them." He continued cautiously. "And like us, many children around our age have felt the responsibility of looking out for them selves, and may be supporting them selves independently. They may have little or no faith in the government, or adults in general. The sooner the government can pull them back into the fold and turn them into upstanding citizens, the happier they all will be.

Quatre sighed inwardly at a job well done, and gratefully moved onto less rocky terrain. He turned back to his hands. "Okay." He said. "We've got political symbolism, school ambition combined with available funds, the fear of how warriors will react to becoming useless, and the idea that kids like us may take some extra convincing to shape up and fly straight." He ticked them off on his fingers. Then, as sort of an afterthought, he said "And we might as well take into account that Miss Relena has a personal history with all of us, especially Heero." Heero grumbled at the last part.

"Alone, these laws might have overlooked us on a technicality, despite our fame, but together they make a web we cannot avoid. We came to this planet secretly and anonymously, we answered to no authority, we saved them from them selves. When the fight was over we left abruptly, and made our way to the abyss."

"All combined I'd say that our major mistake was that we were trying too hard to be, well…" he struggled to find an alternate word, but failed, "…normal." The others looked impatient for him to continue, so he hurried on. "We weren't there for the politicians to refer to, we weren't actively supporting the new governments, and we weren't expressing our happiness with how things were going. And to top it off, most of us joined the most problematic group of people – the young, uneducated ex-military who have experienced personal losses due to war and have no recognizable positive influences."

Trowa summarized. "We were practically begging to be exploited."


	3. Surrender

Surrender

The problem, as the Gundam Pilots learned, was the metal detectors.

Things like jewelry and fillings didn't register, but larger things like knives and swords and ammunition and guns…well…

"Now kid, there's no need for-" The principal pleaded with Heero, as the teen held him at gunpoint.

"You're not taking my guns" Heero said flatly as the principal sweated and held up his hands.

"Precious…my precious…nasty man won't hurt you…" Duo murmured dreamily. He was cradling a smaller, wood-and-metal version of his former scythe, having grabbed the blade portion back from a security guard, and assembled the staff immediately. It wasn't complete, there was still about a foot and a half missing from the bottom, because the same security guard had grabbed the last piece form the duffel bag and had tried to instigate a game of keep-away.

"There're _ceremonial_" Quatre was holding one of his curved swords, but a counselor refused to hand over the other one. Behind them, Trowa leaned against the opposite wall, unconcerned, as all that had been found in _his_ duffel bag was disassembled metal parts. No, he would only become concerned when and if the adults realized that those parts were all machine gun attachments, and that his own fire arm was safely in the small of his back.

Like Trowa, Wufei made no move, but he watched silently as another one of campus security rifled through his bag. He knew that the only reason the metal detectors had gone off on his bag was because he had packed his brass knuckles in there, but still, these "authority" types were _way_ overreacting!

"W-weapons of any kind are not allowed on campus." The principal stammered.

"That's bullcrap." Heero insisted. "What if something happened?"

"What if you're attacked where you sleep?" Duo shot in.

"No one's going to attack you" a female counselor in one corner tried to talk them down. "The war is over. You don't have to fight anyone." She found herself under five searching gazes. Then Heero let his hand fall to his side, and stepped back. Duo and Quatre also retreated to the wall claimed by Trowa and Wufei. The adults were left scratching their heads in bewilderment as the five enacted a football-esque huddle, and snippets of conversation floated over.

After much discussion, the boys were all leaning against the wall like finely dressed gangsters, and Heero, as their spokesperson, said "What do you propose we do instead with our weapons?"

"Get rid of them!"

"Unacceptable!" Duo roared, brandishing his sickle.

"We'd be almost totally helpless." Said Trowa.

"Against what?" the same woman found her voice again. "Who or what are you so afraid of?"

"Ghosts"

"Boogiemen"

"Pixies"

"Demons"

"Other students?"

This uncoordinated answer left the boys eyeing each other, as if to say 'you're afraid of _what _now?' Seeing weakness, the principal cleared his throat and said, "Further more, it is the law that no lethal weapons may be carried on public property."

The boys shared a look. It was that damnable Law again.

"And," the principal continued, "if you do not disarm yourselves and submit to searching, you shall all be placed under arrest."

The reaction was almost instant, though not at all what any of the adults had expected. Duo and Quatra tossed their blades to the floor between them and the adults, and Heero's gun joined them as soon as he had turned on the safety. The three then joined Wufei and Trowa in digging through their clothes. The adults started when Trowa pulled out his gun, but settled down when it joined the pile. They were further dismayed as the boys pulled out even more weapons. Heero had two guns hidden on his person, as well as a lighter that made a suspiciously heavy _clunk_ as it hit the ground. Trowa was almost cocooned in small arms, and his switch blade was also thrown down. Duo and Wufei both surrendered heavy-looking rings that could be smashed into people's faces, as well as the necklaces around their necks, the daggers in their boots, and the small swords they had strapped to their backs under their jackets. Quatre's contribution to the pile was the largest, as well as the most ominous, as he revealed pack after pack from hidden pockets on his body. One or two of them popped open when they hit the floor, and showed cargos of things like wicked looking spikes and bottles of several un-identified liquids.

Disarmed, and feeling rather naked, despite their uniforms still being in place, if a little rumpled, the boys as one reached up and put their hands on their heads, and dropped suddenly down to their knees, as if their puppet strings had been cut. Standard surrender procedures.

The principal and his cronies stared.

When the Gundam Pilots had arrived, they had done so with a and average of three suitcases each. When they left that office, all any of them had was a not quite full small gym bag apiece. The authorities had confiscated firearms, knives, poisons, manuals on how to make explosives, bomb parts, locked boxes that they were warned not to open, and files, both on paper and on disk, that were so heavily encoded that they just screamed 'unsafe'. Heero and Quatre were to await news on their laptops, and they had been ordered to give up all access codes and passwords.

The five tromped sullenly behind a student guide, who was to lead them to their dorms. The boy chattered brainlessly, and they tuned him out in favor of their own thoughts. What had happened back there? All five had fought and bled for this idea of total pacifism, but now, in the face of living under it, they found themselves smothered. When they were living on their own, they had all been able to hide the tools they deemed necessary under the guise of personal possessions, but in this more controlled environment, they were forced to try and forget the lessons of self defense that had been fed to them for so long. Now all they had left were clothes. Almost, anyway.

"Uh-oh" Duo whispered so the guide wouldn't hear. "I forgot to hand in my bottle of chloroform."

Wake up before dawn.

_You're getting soft if you think you need more sleep than this…_

Dress simply.

_These #$& uniforms are useless…_

Exercise. Train. Climb out of the window and go running.

_Faster! Faster! Don't complain about the weather or the extra gravity…_

Shimmy up the drain pipe at the crack of dawn, climb back in and hit the showers.

_Boy, do you stink…_

Dress in #$& uniform.

_Itchy, constricting, non-camouflaged, unprotective, #$& uniform!_

"What are we supposed to do now?" Duo wanted to know. Every one looked up and down the hallways. The only people up and about (besides themselves) were the adults patrolling the halls. Most of the rooms were silent behind their locked doors, with only a few exceptions.

A yawn behind them called their attention. The guide from last night was there, in boxers and a white tee-shirt. He muttered about roommates who were inconsiderate and made too much noise, and then he stumbled back to his room.

"Like he can say anything" said Wufei. "He snored all night long." The student dorms were two to a room, and Wufei was the unlucky odd man out who had to share with a civilian. Said civilian was now shuffling to the bathroom with a towel over his shoulder. Unaware he was being scrutinized, he made no effort to his flabby, plump body, weak pale limbs, half-blind eyes…

'bump' 'thump' 'OW'

…and slow reflexes.

The student clambered to his feet, and paused. He found all five celebrities staring at him, and he blushed in embarrassment at having them see him trip. He hurried on to his shower.

In an unspoken move, Wufei led them down the halls in search of breakfast. After getting directions from hall monitor who was skeptical about so many up at this hour, he led them directly to the land of full bellies and contentness. The cooks were far from ready to start serving the planned meal to any sort of crowd, but they fed the boys hot oatmeal anyway. They our heroes were once again faced with the question of 'what next?".

No one seemed in the mood for chatting, or moving, so they lounged there with the ponderings in their heads and watched the students waltz in. The dining hall was a glorified cafeteria, with rounded tables and chairs instead of long tables and benches. For now, at least, they were content to bogart the table in the far corner form the door, with the sixth and seventh chairs removed so as not to encourage any unwanted company. This tactic of self exclusion looked increasingly useless, as from this distance they could lip-read the conversations of people who were considering whether to pull up a chair and introduce themselves.

"Any idea what's planned for today?" Heero turned to Quatre for answers.

"We're supposed to get our schedules soon. We won't know for sure until then."

No one could think of anything else to say, and the group once more lapsed into boredom.


	4. Lessons of Many Kinds

Lessons of Many Kinds

"Hey, Heero," Wufei, like the others, was staring distastefully down at the class schedule he had been given. "Didn't you attend this school once before?"

"Not that anyone can prove. I destroyed all record of my stay." Heero wondered at how, when pretending to be normal, he had been in average and above-average classes, but now that his vast talent and expertise was know, he was in average and below-average classes.

The entire morning had dragged on. Occasionally someone would vocalize brief statements or questions, but a conversation had yet to take root.

Silence.

More silence.

"Classes don't start for another hour."

"I know. How can these people waste away their morning like this?"

Silence.

More silence.

"Won't we need books or pencils or something?"

Silence.

More silence.

Then the silence took on a quality that had each of them snapping back to reality, namely, that the formerly chatter filled dinning hall fell under a widening hush. The last echoes of conversation were fading away when the five were alerted by the skreeking of chairs sliding across the floor towards them. Dragging the chairs were three prim and proper students with practiced welcoming smiles.

"Hello." A young man forced his chair between Duo and Quatre, "My name is David Mouze." He sat down and offered his had to the pilots on either side, who shook politely. "And these beautiful young ladies…" Between Quatre and Wufei, a girl with faux-blonde hair in a large ornamental clip tried to inconspicuously slide her chair, and across the table, a brunette with chin-length curls planted her bottom between Trowa and Heero. David introduced them as Danielle Germaine and Violette Prov. "Welcome to our school!" they chimed in unison.

"Your school? I wasn't aware that this place was privately owned." Trowa's comment seemed to confuse the intruders.

David was the first to show weakness, as his smile did not reach his eyes. He was pale, yet lean, giving him the look of someone who spent a lot of time at the gym. His blond hair was a shade darker than Quatre's, and he had a feminine voice that sounded like a gust of wind. In this voice he stammered out how "school belongs to the students" and "residents claim residency" and other such nonsense. He seemed grateful when the blonde one (Danielle or Violette, they weren't sure) saved him with a well timed "How have you been enjoying your stay?"

She seemed to be expecting an answer, but no one immediately offered. Wufei spoke for his friends. "English isn't my first language, so I'm a little confused. Is she asking _if_ were enjoying ourselves, or in what _manner_ have we been enjoying ourselves since our arrival?"

"The first one, I would think, but it might be both." Duo was a native English speaker, but with so many other languages crowding in his mind, and so few chances to practice and maintain, he was some times lost, especially when faced with lingo that was above his street-rat upbringing. It didn't help, either, that the dining hall was still silent of every thing but whispers, and he could feel people staring at the back of his neck.

Quatre asked "What would be the traditional culturally accepted response?"

"Uhh...some variation of 'fine'" Duo held up his fingers as makeshift quotation marks as he said 'fine'. About a heartbeat later, the girl was given the spontaneous comments of fine/I'm fine/we're fine/doin' fine/fine, Thank you.

If these boys were dogs, or horses, they would have gladly admitted to the ability to smell fear. Since they were people, and Gundam pilots, they kept that ability to themselves.

The brunette decided it was her turn to chit-chat. "Are your accommodations to your liking?"

"Beats barracks."

"Or prison"

"Not as nice as my place at the circus, though."

Once again, their perfectly honest and sincere answers shot down the usually successful 'small talk starters' like an anti-aircraft gunblowing upa hang glider.

David settled on a divide-and-conquer strategy. "So" he said as slid one elbow on the table and faced Duo, effectively blocking Duo from seeing Quatre, "Where are you from?"

"Originally? Uhh…" Duo had to think about it. "I come from space. The L2 colonies, I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Operation Meteor was my first visit to earth. But I could be wrong." Sensing that this was not what David had been looking for, he tried to make up for it. "Um, er, and what about you? Where do you hail from?"

If the pilots openly admitted to being telepathic, they would have said that all three aristocratic children had thought along the lines of _finally_!

"I'm from Bristol." David purred. "That's in England."

"Uh-huh." Duo turned back to reading his student handbook, just about ready to give this up for a bad job.

"My family is descended from French royalty" Curly-brown-hair was saying. "And Danielle grew up in Italy." She motioned over to blond-straight-hair, and unknowingly solved the identity problem.

"My biological Mother was of French parentage." Quatre, now finished with reading his own handbook, was ready to fall into the practice of benign social rituals.

"And where is your birth mother now?" Violette asked.

"I don't have a birth mother."

Violette did a double take. "Yes you do." She insisted. "You just said she was…"

"I said 'biological mother' not 'birth mother'"

"What's the difference?" David wanted to know.

"Biological parents are the persons from whom raw genetic material originated. A 'birth mother' is whoever carried you and actually birthed you in the hospital."

No one voiced the question of under what circumstances were the two not one and the same, or how you would exist without being carried and born.

Danielle and Violette switched to auxiliary function, and began strings of words that were similar to news casts, commenting on current events and the weather.

Wufei closed his student handbook abruptly, leaned back, and crossed his arms. "This school has too many rules."

"It was more fun with the sweepers."

"When I'm with the Maganacs, I _make_ the rules. Even when I'm at my family's company I'm in charge. This is going to take some getting used to." Quatre looked glum.

"And are you at your family's company often?" Danielle looked ready to sink her claws into him with a predatory gold-digging look in her eye.

"Often enough. As heir, I'm expected to learn as much as possible before taking over."

"And who is running things in the meantime?"

"My sisters. Either they or their husbands will work for me at some point."

"How many sisters do you have?"

"Twenty-nine."

On Quatre's other side, David whistled. "Jeepers. Got any brothers at all?"

"Technically no." Quatre wondered what kind of guy said 'jeepers'. He was also making a mental note to chew out the others for leaving him to verbally fend off the weirdoes by himself. "But since I was adopted into the Maganacs, it's almost like having a whole lot of brothers."

"Do all of you have such large families?" Violette inquired.

The pilots just laughed.

Before heading to class, they found their lockers. Inside were all their books and supplies, with their names already on everything, from binders to pencils. Heero grabbed his text labeled '_en france' _and followed the pilots of 02 and 05 to the language arts hallway, where he would sit alone in French class and laugh at the mental picture of his teammates struggling in English Lit. Wufei would have problems with the 'English' part, and Duo was sure to stumble over the 'proper' part. Trowa and Quatre headed to the third floor of the other side of the building for their not-so-early-for-them-but-early-for-the-rest-of-their-classmates pre calc class.

Things went as Heero predicted. He had a short conversation (in _perfect _French) as to what was expected in this class, decided he was doomed to a semester of boredom, and resigned himself to finding something to occupy himself when the teacher wasn't looking. Trowa and Quatre had similar conclusions. But Wufei was advised to apply for ESL (English as a Second Language) consideration, and Duo cussed out a fellow student with phrases that made the elderly English teacher have a feinting spell.

Exactly 55 minutes later, the five were back to navigating the halls. Heero, Quatre, and Wufei met up at their Geography/World History class, and 02 and 04 headed off alone, Duo to Physics and Trowa to his own English class (thankfully with a different teacher than the poor old lady who had been so traumatized the hour before). 55 minutes after that, Quatre and Wufei headed to the same French class that had bored Heero so much, Heero had to listen to that old lady give him a fifteen minute lecture on why swearing was such a no-no (he vowed to get Duo back later), Duo was in Math, and Trowa was in Geography/World History. Once that was over, they had their last class of the morning, with Trowa and Wufei in Physics, Heero in Math, Duo in Geography/World history, and Quatre in English (sans little old lady)

Lunch was sandwiches, roast beef on whole grain bread, with a side of salad. Heero threatened to shave Duo bald if he, Heero, had to sit through one more admonishment inspired by Duo's actions. All were starting to go stir-crazy in the horrible uniforms, but they had suffered worse, so no one complained (out lout). Then Heero and Quatre left for chemistry, Trowa and Duo had Spanish class, and Wufei was on his own in math class.

By now, they were all thoroughly miserable, convinced this was a waste of time, and were silently longing for the homes they had carefully carved for themselves over the past year. Homesickness is a bitch.

Luckily, the last class of the day for all of them was Phys. Ed. There they donned the (matching) gym clothes, and were able to crowd around each other, to, once again, discourage outside interference. In this first class they didn't do any exercising. The coach explained that they had been told to put on the outfits to make sure every one had one, and that every one's fit. Then he outlined his expectations for the year, mainly saying "your grades are based on effort and attendance" and that each student was expected to maintain a mandatory folder on their progress over the semester. He ended saying "We get done ten to fifteen minutes early for showers and changing out." He clapped his hands together. "Class dismissed ladies! Now let's see you hustle!" And he herded his (entirely male) class to the boy's lockers.

"Is it just me, or did he spend that entire class talking at us?" Trowa was slightly unnerved, and confided in Wufei.

"It's not jus you." Wufei they hypothesized that since the class was mostly upperclassmen, the instructor had recognized most of them as returning students, and knew that these five were the only ones who had never heard that speech. "We got his 'freshmen lecture'."

They reluctantly went back to their other uniforms.


	5. From Beyond Our Reach

From Beyond Our Reach

"This class is pointless…"

"It is not!"

"Who cares if someone knows the difference between asyndeton and alliteration?"

"I do."

"Why? What possible importance could these words have in your life?"

"I'm a teacher. It's my job."

Blinks. "So you were paid to care."

"I…guess that you could say that…"

"So…how much would it cost for you _not_ to care?" (reaches for wallet).

Trowa and Duo were having the hardest time. Duo had once spent about six months at a missionary school, but that was a long time ago. And Trowa had no recollection of attending any school of any sort, ever.

Wufei had been raised in a temple community that educated its own, and Heero had not only infiltrated this exact school once before, but had also been posing as a normal student at a public school ever since the fighting stopped (though he refused to tell them where). Quatre was somewhat new to this, as he had only ever had private tutors, but he adjusted well.

All five of them had amazingly good grades.

None of them shirked at the idea of hard work (sometimes they enjoyed the challenge). They were familiar with reading engineering text, technology manuals, and mission parameters. And while the teachers were somewhat uneasy with the manner of speech in their written work, as soon as they began seeing research papers and essays as scouting reports and mission evaluations, they hammered out military-esque papers in record time. Lectures could be likened to mission briefings, and group work was just that, group work.

"It kinda makes sense. Most these things were designed to prepare people for the real world, so it stands to reason that if you can function in the real world, you could do most of these things." Quatre, as always (except for that little, tiny, miniscule incident with the Wing Zero) was right.

Once they had proven their knowledge of various subjects, they were able to move on to more advanced subjects. Pre Calc gave way to calculus, and then to trigonometry (which was, regrettably, the highest math class offered at this school). Physics and Chemistry gave way to Honors Physics and Chemistry, and then to advanced placement and collage credit courses (and this is how you calculate exactly how fast to launch your missiles…). No one was able to get out of Geography/World History, for even though they knew every square inch of this planet (Of course I know where the capitals and major cities of Western Europe are! I was sent here to burn them to the ground!) their knowledge of earth history was full of holes, as they had been taught mostly about various wars and strategies. All had been offered the chance to switch out of their language class, but the school offered no language that they weren't already familiar with, so they said 'to hell with it'.

PE was a joke. The instructor had a full class of cattle-children to run into the ground, and didn't have time to set up anything special for the Gundam Pilots (so far). It soon became apparent that nobody at this place knew that it was physically possible to get up before seven AM, so they continued to rise at four-thirty to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, and event that was rather insipid.

"I wish we had some of our gear to practice with." Heero always felt naked with out some sort of fire arm.

"Why'd you hand in those knuckle rings anyway? Those wouldn't be considered lethal." Trowa was questioning the wisdom of giving up absolutely everything.

"For most cases they would just be damaging, not lethal, but if you went for the throat…" Wufei let it hang, for no one needed further information.

And so they had a bottle of chloroform between them. (Which they assumed they could keep because it was non-lethal (shows what you get for assuming…)).

"C'mon, guys. It's not so bad. And as soon as I find some barbed wire, I'll show you how to do spit-shots." Quatre was trying to stay upbeat.

When in groups, their peers proved boring at best, and annoying at worst. David, Danielle, and Violette hadn't lasted a week before backing off, and they were immediately replaced by a handful of jocks, who were later replaced by another set of jocks, who were then followed by representatives of the pep squad.

Bit by bit, they were alienating the entire lunchroom.

But it was different in a classroom setting. With the lines dividing them from other people somewhat blurred, and no obvious groups performing maneuvers, the pilots were able to relax a little, and get along better. Heero had had over a year to learn how to interact one-on-one with another student, so he wasn't exactly unpopular, especially once people learned that he was naturally silent, but listened always. Trowa had a similarly quiet demeanor, but he had picked up charm at the circus, and so what he did say won him kudos. Quatre and Duo had been made into idols of Niceness and Coolness, respectively, but thus far had no more friends that any of the others, for Duo scorned the preps who were given everything and earned nothing, and Quatre didn't willingly associate with people who were so spoiled, selfish and shallow that they made him sick.

Wufei had the strangest position at the school. His belief that women were weak usually upset the fairer sex, especially the soldiers he met during the war, but in this setting, with out danger or combat, led him to treat them like glass that might break. He gained a reputation as a perfect gentleman, and was a regular heartthrob.

It was three weeks later when Duo broke the illusion. His keen eyes watched a perfectly normal tennis ball as it sailed over the school border wall, and no one took notice as he walked over picked it up, and extracted the piece of paper from the slit in the side.

He waited until they were gathered to 'study' alone in Heero and Trowa's room to tell them about it. "My friends from the sweepers got a message through to me today. They sent me my laptop weeks ago, and got worried when I didn't respond to my E-mail. Truth is, I never go the dammed thing."

"They've been stopping our messages." Trowa had reached this conclusion some time ago. He also saw no need to explain who 'they' were. "Cathy said she'd write me as soon as she got to the next site, but I haven't gotten anything yet."

"My sisters should have called or written by now. Even the ones who don't like me should be sending in reports." Quatre fretted about what state his company would be in when he returned.

"Doesn't mean they haven't tried." That was about as comforting as Wufei got.

"Wait a minute." Heero said. "If you both have families, how'd you get roped into this?"

"Cathy isn't legally old enough to take possession of me." Trowa, if he had been alone, would have fished out her picture. "And if she fought it, they'd realize she's an orphan, too, and she'd end up in some bogus school. Not to mention the fact that we're not one hundred percent sure we really are related at all."

"Most of my sisters are old enough, but that's more of a problem than a blessing. As soon as my father died, many of them began battling for custody of me. Some of them actually do want to take care of me, but none of them can agree on what's best for me. And the rest just want a bigger piece of the inheritance."

"Hmm. Too bad we don't know the motives behind stopping our mail." Said Heero.

"Actually, I do." Duo said. "The laptop bit was just explaining why they had to send a secret message instead of just hollering."

"Quatre was right about us being bought as trophies. The school made a sizeable donation to the people in charge of our areas. They didn't realize that they'd been had."

"Hmmph. Someone was using us to get their money." Wufei didn't like being used.

"It's more than that. Someone's using this as a politically correct jail for the unwanted." Duo pulled out the note. "By law, a person can only be held for a certain amount of time if there are no charges against them. But our situation is kinda unreadable. They aren't really sure weather to proclaim us heroes and saviors, or to condemn us as terrorists."

"If they're doing any sort of debate about us, then they've been real quiet about us." Said Trowa.

"Have they reached any conclusions so far?" Quatre asked.

"You mean aside from sending us here? Yeah, say's here that they've agreed to let the public decide, in some way or another. That may mean putting us on a trial by jury, or, if they want to avoid looking bad in case we are more popular than they thought…"

Duo frowned at the paper in his hands. "They filmed opening night for a reason. Looks like they want to see how the people view us, and are using the media. Plus, they're going around interviewing people who've met us, and collecting data on everyone. They even managed to dig up some notes the professors left behind. What they're doing with all this stuff is unknown, but they got a lot of it."

A knock on the door ended the talk. It was a boy from across the hall, one of the more persistent jock-types. "Hey," he said "Have you heard about football tryouts?"


	6. Team Players

**It's me again. I'm frankly rather amazed that I made it this far. Six whole chapters, wow. And I wasn't dragging my feet about it either. I'd like to warn readers at this time that things may be up for a change: school starts in two days, and it may put the k-bosh on my writing speed. Or not. I've found this strangely relaxing, and may end up writing more on general principal.**

**_Important:_ One thing that I've noticed in Gundam fanfic trends is that a lot of people are one one side or the other on the 'Releena Issue'. I'm kinda curious, so I've decided to have a poll. Review, and tell me what your views on the Princess of Sanq, Queen of the World' and Vice Foreign Minister are. I'm not saying that I'm going to base my portrayal of her in my fic on what the results are. In fact, I pretty much already know how she's going to end up in my writing. But it may influence _some_ parts, and quite frankly, as I said before, I'm curious. **

Team Players

Football. Tackle football. Touch football. Flag football. Rugby. And in some places, also known as soccer.

"So what you're saying is that two sports, as different from each other as they are from any other sport, somehow got mixed up and now have the same name?" Heero was stupefied that such a thing could happen. Where had communication failed?

"Yeah. Most people nowadays use the American terms, a football being 'ball that is shaped like a foot', and soccer being the other one. The other way to look at it is to define a football as 'ball that is kicked with feet' and soccer… well, y'know, the other one."

Heero vowed to look up the origins of the word 'soccer' and see why it seemed like such a generic term. But later, not right now. Right now he was walking with two of his classmates from math, both seniors who were trying to get him to try out for their own sport. Danny, the broad one, wanted him on the 'ball that is shaped like a foot' team, and Willis, the one that was shorter than Heero (who was not that tall to begin with) was arguing in favor of the 'ball that is kicked with feet' team, but was actually trying to convince Heero to join lacrosse.

"Actually, they're not _that_ different, all in all. Both games have people try to get their ball in the other team's goal, by playing to their players strengths. They work out plays to play a better game, and they use padding to protect certain body parts used in play." Willis led the way across the grassy field, trying to steer Heero over to the lacrosse equipment he set out earlier with out Danny catching on.

Heero pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. This was confusing. It was only a game, but both boys were obsessed with their preferred sport. And Willis wasn't helping with all those 'plays'. And, of course, for God's sake, they couldn't even agree on a _name_ for what they were doing!

Unknown to Heero, Duo and Wufei were undergoing similar treatment. Wufei had been cornered by a gaggle of cheerleaders, two gaggles actually. Both groups of females were trying their level best to convince him how very _grateful _they would be if they joined a team. And Duo was sitting in the sports office, wondering if he was going to get a detention if he asked the adults to shut up and get to the point, as various coaches spewed praise for the noble pastime that they instructed young people in.

"There's a lot of running in both sports" Danny tossed a ball that was not really ball-shaped to himself as he walked alongside Heero. "Coach will have you run laps at first, but eventually you'll have to go on the two-mile jog with the rest of us."

"You only go two miles?" Heero was again dumbfounded for a moment, before remembering that these were cow-people, who were soft, lazy, and weak. "I can run that easy." He added, quicker that he normally would. "It won't be a problem."

"Good. Then you can start on speed training." Willis was almost to the end of the field, and had successfully led them astray from their original destination of the supply shed. "Speed is a big thing in lacrosse. A lot of people on the team are also in track."

Heero, having seen some of the track team members practicing during their off-season, again scorned their power, knowing at least four people other than himself that could take them on any day.

"We'll start with dribbling…" Willis was saying.

"So now we choose between football, basketball, and lacrosse." Heero was saying at lunch.

"I wonder why Quatre and I weren't asked." Trowa wondered.

"Who knows."

"It's probably just timing. Someone will probably get around to asking you later today."

"Hnn. Maybe."

One could usually judge the impact of a particular subject by the amount of gossip about it. Using this measure, sporting tryouts seemed to be very important indeed. Even with their limited experience with social practices, the boys all independently reached the conclusion that sports created some sort of hierarchy within the school environment (but it was such a benign topic that none of them for a moment would believe that the same held true to any sort of degree in the rest of society).

"I don't think it would be wise to try and join more than one of the teams. Scheduling conflicts and such."

"Not to mention the fact that there seems to be a demand for team loyalty."

"Which do you want to try?"

"It would probably be best to just try out for all of them. There's no guarantee that we would get on the first one we tried for."

"Ha! Like anyone at this house of pillows could beat us in anything."

"Physical prowess may not help us here. None of us know anything about these games. They may want some one more experienced."

"Plus, if we try out for all of them, we can be sure we can choose the best one, since we can see what the games are like. We can turn down any offers we end up not wanting."

The break in conversation was filled with eating, as they were, as usual, discussing things over a meal, dinner in this case.

"So…Lucy…what'd you think of Ashley's new haircut?"

"Oh. My. Gawd. She look's like a total ho."

None of the boys said anything. At the request of the lunchroom staff, they had stopped removing the extra chairs from their table at every meal. Inevitably, someone would sit down. Sometimes they were lucky and it was a classmate with a legitimate topic to talk about, but more often then not, it was a total stranger or a familiar suck-up. The pilot's tactic in either case was to let the outsider eat in peace, but previous experience taught them to be wary of people who wanted to spy on them for gossip purposes. So now they were in the habit of deliberately avoiding the English language at mealtimes, as well as Spanish, French, Italian, and several other languages that they would suspect any of these international students to speak. Today's language of choice was Arabic. Whatever 'Lucy' and friend were planning to do with what they heard at the table, it would be of little use to them. The news of what sport team the Gundam celebrities would be joining would remain obscure until they actually did join something.

The Pilots were more than a little excited about this. They were bored out of their skulls, and the idea of some real challenge was putting a small spring in their step. They had all grown up in various states of isolation and/or hardship, a game of any sort was a novel experience.

"Are we going to talk to any body else about this?" Wufei said suddenly, surprising his friends. The pilots had never, ever, discussed their actions with any one but themselves.

"I think that between you, Duo, and myself, we have enough information to make an informed decision."

"Heh. He just wants to avoid any further 'persuasion' from those 'cheerleaders'.

Wufei made no motion to reply, but he was unusually wary of what was going on behind him, and was pressed into the seat of his chair as much as he could. He had barely gotten away from the female feeding frenzy intact, and was still stewing over their assault on his person. His butt in particular. He wondered what kind of strategy it was to caress the prisoner and to pinch and/or cup various portions of the anatomy.

"Women in this place are strange." He said finally, and continued on his soup, pointedly ignoring the still perplexed girls across the table.

Tryouts were the next afternoon. In any other instance, it might have waited until after classes were completely done, but their PE instructor was also the football coach, and gave every one in the class the option of either trying out or going to play flag football on the other side of the field. The tryout participants were led through a series of tests, running, crashing into lines of vaguely man-sized padded metal, and catching and throwing the lemon shaped object. Not being well informed of the game, they could not truly say how well they preformed. In about a half-hour, the people playing flag football went in to change, and a few minutes after that, people began trickling out from other classes, and joined in the tests. The pilots were done in short order, but hung around to watch the rest of the students. Since the tryouts were on the football field, they leaned in the shade of the cement concessions stand a little ways off, and chatted aimlessly about what they saw. The only people who took any notice of them were the hand full of assistant coaches and adult football fans who had volunteered to come out and help evaluate the hopefuls. Once in a while someone would glance their way, or talk to a friend about the observers, but no one made any move to bother them. Finally, after more than another hour, the event seemed to be winding down, and the ex-soldiers departed.

"Sorry I'm late." Quatre said hurridly. He handed the teacher a note, and rushed to his seat.

"Where have you been?" Heero asked Quatre. It was G/WH class, and not only had Quatre been late, but he hadn't been at the lockers between classes either, and Trowa told them he had been pulled out early in Math.

"The Front Office wanted to see me." Quatre slid in to his seat, and got out his materials for class. The lecture hall as acoustically designed and they had to whisper if not to disturb any one. Down on the floor at the front of the class, Prof. Falls, the techno phobic teacher, was having problems with the projector. The fact that said projector was so old it still ran on the antique DVD technology may have had something to do with it. Taking advantage of the delay, Quatre spilled.

"We have confirmation that they've been interfering with communications. My sister Iria finally got through."

"What did she say? What method did she use?" Heero and Wufei had their interest piqued.

"She used the universal language."

"Money again? How much did she have to offer them to get them to stop?"

"She didn't _offer_ them money, she was going to_ take _their money. She threatened to sue them if they continued to interfere with the operation and running of the Winner Corporation."

"That's great! Does this mean we'll be getting all our mail now?"

Quatre frowned. "No, not really. They slapped together some policy about student communications, and are saying that only official business will be allowed for me. He tried to make it sound like he was doing me a favor."

"Pfft. That's nothing new. Everybody in this place acts like they're doing you a favor just by existing." Wufei was exaggerating, but not by much.

At this point, a student was randomly selected out from the crowd to run the projector so the teacher wouldn't have to show how stupid he was any longer, and the three had to shut up and listen. But Quatre still had news, although this part wasn't necessarily _good_ news.

Later, gathered at lunch, Quatre relayed this first part to the rest of his team mates. David Mouze, along with a kid from their Gym class, looked from face to face as the conversation went on in a language neither of them could identify. Understanding the tone, if not the words, and the effect on the celebrities, if not the reason, both bystanders wondered what was going on that could make the usually passive foreigners visibly relieved.

"What's every one so happy about?" David asked.

The boy from PE, Marvin, who had more sense, or more respect for people's privacy, or maybe just a better understanding of just how rude it was to be nosey in other people's business (I'm voting for the last one, considering the environment in which all these children were raised), ignored David and addressed the reason why he himself had come here.

"How'd you do in tryouts?" Marvin was a sports fan, but not a full-fledged athlete, and so had held a mediocre position on the team since his freshman year.

There was the silence he had come to associate with any question that was posed to them as a group, as the five boys, with out any visible signals, sorted out who should speak up. Trowa spoke up first, he shrugged and said "Dunno."

"Aw, come _on_, you've got to have heard something. You guys were tearing it up out there!"

"How come you asked us how we did instead of if we've heard anything?" Trowa wondered.

"It's been less than a day. Results weren't promised until the weekend." Heero said.

Sounds of eating ensued. David and Marvin were somewhat dismayed when the next statement (coming from Wufei) was again in another language, signaling something that the pilots didn't feel like sharing.

"Man, you _guys_, don't shut me out! Speak in English like normal people!" David complained.

"Why would you associate normalcy with only English? English is no more common than any other language." Wufei was growing tired of David's continued presence. The lad was so much like a woman that Wufei wondered if there hadn't been a mix-up at birth, and he was all the time trying to come up with an excuse to stay with them.

"The front office wanted to see me about some incoming students." Quatre didn't want to be bothered with stepping on anyone's toes, and could justify allowing this tidbit to hit the gossip mill, so he answered Wufei's question of 'what else did the front office want to talk to you about this morning?'.

"Why would they bother you about that?" Wufei asked. David and Marvin were speechless. It had never occurred to _anyone_ to simply _ask_ to be included in what was going on in 'Gundam Land', but apparently the method worked.

"Well," Quatre chose his words carefully, knowing full well that this would probably be all over school in an hour and a half. "One of the new students is my sister, Pricilla. They assumed I would want to be the one to show her around."

"Is Pricilla a nice sister or a not-so-nice sister?" Was Duo's question.

"I honestly don't know. I've never met her."

"Then how do you know it will really be her and not some imposter?" Heero obviously saw this as a security risk.

"All my sisters and I were genetically engineered for looks. If you've seen one of them, you've seen them all."

"Do you think that one of us could identify your sisters just by knowing you?"

"Not as easily. My father drew the line at certain features he didn't want in his only son, so I guess I'm the most original looking of the lot. Otherwise I could have been a lot prettier." Quatre took a sip of water.

"When does she arrive?"

"Tomorrow. I won't be able to go the basketball tryouts."

"Seemed kind of a boring game anyway."

Quatre made noises of agreement, and then turned the conversation over to the lacrosse tryouts that afternoon after PE.

By the time tryouts came about, Quatre's news was all over the school. And, since the students were given a few hours to ponder this information, most everyone had decided that even if it did involve a Gundam pilot, they simply didn't care. Sisters really weren't that interesting, and this girl was just another new student.


	7. Incoming Attack

**I wonder if the lack of participation in my poll is an indication of how few people care one way or another about Releena, of how few people are willing to review, orof how few people actually read the authors notes. Oh well, not that it matters. One thing that disturbed me was the suggestion that Pricilla will be of special interest in herself, and be similar to her brother and his friends. This time around, I'd like you to tell me your impressions of Pricilla, both before and after you read this chapter. Do you expect her to be some sort of self insertion, or Mary Sue? Once you've actually met her, did your opinions change?**

Incoming Attack

Quatre hurried to put his things away after fourth hour the next day.

"Slow down. And don't worry, it's just a sister. It's not like you have to impress her or anything." Duo soothed.

"Things in my family have been uneasy ever since they realized I had become a Gundam Pilot. It only got worse after everyone started squabbling for money and stock in the company after my father died." Quatre shut the locker door a little too loudly, and zipped up his backpack. "I'm not _nervous_, I'm just kind of …apprehensive. I don't know where this is going to lead, or how to carry and portray myself." He leaned against the locker door for a brief reprieve. "I guess I just don't know if she's a friend, and enemy, or a neutral party."

"Do you want us to come with you?" Heero asked.

"No. Maybe. I dunno. It may not be a great first impression if I show up with all the cannons out."

"None of us are there to fight. Besides, it's on our way to the cafeteria." Wufei closed his own locker and replaced the lock. "We'll just go with you to pick your sister and the other new students, and then head to lunch. It won't mean anything, so they can't draw any conclusions from it."

The team walked down the hallway. The principal's secretary was waiting for them at the corner of the hallway, and hurriedly spoke.

"There's only four. That's a good number. We usually don't get that many new students, but this is good. One of them is your sister. Did you know that? Of course you did, that's why you're here. You just introduce yourself to the others, take them to lunch, and they'll shadow you in your classes so they can get a feel for this place. Then you can show them the rest of the campus. But not the girl's dorms, even though she's your sister, because it's against the rules, silly! Some one else will show the girls their rooms, you can show the boys around. They don't have any friends here, except for you, and you're really a relative. Are your friends coming? That's good, then they can get to know more people. By 'they' I mean the new students, not your friends. But don't all of you come in at once, it'll be too crowded. The office is really small. I wish we had bigger offices."

They arrived. Quatre spotted his sister through the glass walls of the office, or at least the back of her head. He stepped in with the secretary, Heero, and Wufei, and Trowa and Duo hovered outside the door. The new students were sitting in chairs lined up with their backs against the glass wall. Across from the door, the principal rose from where he was sitting, and ushered them in.

Pricilla rose suddenly. She had been sitting five seats down from the door, between her and them were two boys and two empty seats. She crossed that distance in the measured step all true ladies were taught since birth, and positioned herself near, but at a polite distance from, Quatre.

The principal started to say something, but Quatre knew what path to take. He held out his hand to this new relation.

"I'm number twenty-seven." He said.

"Yes. And the number-one son. I'm the twenty eighth daughter, and the twenty-ninth child."

"It may be easier to just say 'second youngest' and 'fourth youngest'."

"Maybe. My name is Pricilla."

"I'm-"

"Quatre. Yes. I know. Every one does. Even before the war, we knew you because you were the only boy."

Like he had told his teammates, all of Quatre's sisters looked extremely alike. Pricilla was no different. She had the nose that had been deemed 'perfect', the eyes that were a deliberately enchanting shade of blue, and the hair that was of an immaculate tone for regality and seduction. She was shorter than all the other sisters he had ever met, but then again, all the other sisters had been older sisters. This was the first time he could remember meeting one of his few younger siblings.

"Welcome to the school." He said.

"Thank you."

He offered her his arm, but before she could take it, the principal butted in to introduce the two other two students, and mumbled something about the other one having gone to freshen up.

"We can wait." Quatre said. He moved to introduce his friends to the newcomers, watching their expressions carefully. Pricilla either didn't know or didn't care that she was shaking hands that had been stained with blood, and neither did either of the boys. That was good, Quatre thought, as he couldn't tell what her opinion of him was at this time. The newcomers stepped outside to shake hands with Duo and Trowa, and as soon as the door was shut behind them the Principal started talking to the pilots that were in the room (a lot of it was the same as what the secretary had said earlier).

Quatre made the mistake of ignoring the sound of the opening and shutting door behind him, so intent on looking like he was interested in what the principal was saying. The next thing he knew, some one was talking in his ear.

"R901001-MDvMS. Data upload complete. The Zero System has you now."

Quatre screamed horribly and jumped away, in to Heero. He stayed there, hanging on to Heero's neck and practically in his arms. His face was taunt, his mouth pulled back in a grimace, his eyes bugged out, and his entire body tense and in fear of what was before him.

Dorothy Catalonia.

An evil, evil young lady.

Heero pushed Quatre off him, stepped around the boy that still could not find the strength to move, and stood between the two blonds. It was her all right. The self- assured smile, the vampire-white skin, and the freakish eyebrows that stood out like they were two cockroaches that were leeching into her forehead. She peered around Heero at her target, and looked down at Quatre like she was going to eat him, until Heero stepped back into her line of sight.

"Leave now, or face the consequences." Heero warned.

"Leave? I'm not going to leave. I just got into this school, and I'm staying until graduation." She let out that giggle of hers that sounded like the mating call of the devil.

"Do you know each other?" the clueless principal scratched his bald head.

"We've met." Wufei helped Quatre to his feet. Through the window, people stared, and not just the ones who had business to loiter. The three boys stumbled out of the room, and Dorothy followed.

"The lunch room is this way."

What ever impression Quatre had wanted to make, this was certainly not it. While none but the occupants of the room had witnessed the full events of Dorothy's re-emergence in their lives, there obviously had been _something_ going on, and so the gossip started on them. It wasn't helping that Quatre was having trouble keeping himself together. On one side of things, he had to escort his sister and the rest around for the rest of the day, and couldn't ditch them under any circumstances. On the other hand, this was **Dorothy**, the most twisted female mind that any of them had ever come across. Even Wufei acknowledged that she was a formidable enemy. Quatre had quite a day ahead of him.

First of all, he couldn't sit at lunch with the others, he had to sit with his charges. He managed to seat himself as faraway from Dorothy as possible, but couldn't avoid her words. She wanted to know what he had been up to 'since we saw each other last' (she was dancing around the subject of the circumstances of their encounter), and also told him of the tedious life she had led since they departed. If anything this made things with Pricilla even shakier, as it was obvious that Dorothy and Quatre knew each other (if begrudgingly) better than the brother and sister. Pricilla also seemed to resent being left out of the subject, and that her time to talk with Quatre had been cut out, although Quatre wasn't sure if she was mad at him for ignoring her, or at Dorothy for monopolizing her brother.

Heero and Quatre led them to the chemistry lab, and Quatre was grateful for Heero's attempts to distract Dorothy so he could actually focus on getting a word in with Pricilla and giving the grand tour like he was supposed to. The Chemistry teacher ignored their talking in class, but he did shoot dirty looks in their direction for all of the times Quatre's chair would make squeeches across the linoleum as Dorothy would try to touch him.

Heero collared some girls on their way to PE, and convinced them to take Dorothy and Pricilla to the girls locker room to talk with the instructor in charge and get changed. Heero caught up with the rest of their class, but Quatre was eight minutes late because it took the girls so long to get ready. The four new students stood back and watched as the class ran laps and did stretches. After it was over, Dorothy wasted no time in telling the boys just how silly this class was compared to what they used to do.

"What did you use to do?" one of the new boys, Ethan, asked, still unenlightened about the identity of his guide. Pricilla looked smug as Dorothy danced around the answer, and Quatre led his friends to hush her up.

The other four pilots excused themselves for basketball tryouts, and jogged off. Quatre hoped that Dorothy wouldn't try anything with witnesses around, and led the four around campus to some of the more important (and more popular) spots.

"What are you doing up here?" David the Woman believed he had snuck up on Duo, and expected him to jump at the words, but Duo didn't budge from his position, crouched on the roof of their dormitory, and peering through a heavy-duty pair of binoculars.

"What's it to you?"

"We-e-e-ell, you could get in trouble for being up here…"

"So could you."

"And you'd be double-y in trouble for spying on people."

"I have a good reason."

"Looking down girls shirts is not a good reason."

"I'm not looking down any body's shirt."

"Good. But I still need to know what you're doing up here, unless you want me to get some one else to ask you the question…"

Duo shifted his legs, which were in danger of falling asleep. "I'm doing a security check. For Quatre."

David made an 'Ooooh' sound, puckering up his lips in exaggeration. "A _security check_. Sounds like fun, and it's a big military word, too. What's it for?"

Duo chose not to point out that it was two words. "I need to make sure that Dorothy doesn't try anything."

"Dorothy? Who's Dorothy?"

"She's a new student. Just came in today. We met her back in the…back a few years ago."

David wised up and didn't say anything. This was one of the few real references to the war that any of the five had ever made (in the presence of others, in a language common people could understand, loud enough to hear).

"Where are the rest of you?" David finally asked.

"Around. We drew straws, and I got the high ground. If that witch tries anything, we'll be on her faster than an Aquarius runs out of air after you've severed its pipes"

"That's…..too bad for her."

"No. It's perfect. The victim here is Quatre, and I'm not sure how much more he can keep this up."

"What's so bad about her? She's just some girl."

"Wrong. She's a rich, spoiled sadist who used her money and family to get away with the attempted slaughter of billions of people. She's targeted Quatre in the past, and we'll not let her get away with it again."

David the Woman thought that maybe it was time to leave for less creepy company, and leave his unflattering impression of the French teacher for another day.

By dinner Quatre was more tired than truly nervous. He knew better than to let his guard down, but the situation seemed to be under control. Ethan and Freddy had made friends and gone off to eat with them, so he could sit at the table with Pricilla on his right and Trowa on his left and feel safe that Dorothy didn't want a repeat of events. Small talk with Pricilla went swimmingly, as they could just chat about the sisters they had met, and their childhoods, which had been tailor-made for all Winner children, surrounding tutors and high society (he just cut out the parts about training and fighting). Pricilla was not blind to the stone cold glares that the boys tossed at Dorothy, but made no comment. Nor did she bring up the current state of the family company (no business at the table) and Quatre's inexcusable actions (no politics at the table either, just like she had been taught.)

Finally, after the meal was finished and the plates cleared away (by waiters), he was able to escort the ladies to their dorms. Dorothy was in the 'A' building which was for seniors only, and he dropped her off along the way, and enjoyed a few brief moments being alone with his sister as he walked her over to 'E' building, a place for a mix of freshmen and sophomores.

"It was rather rude of you to treat Miss Catalonia that way." Pricilla said finally.

This was the first step to a talk on real issues. "Which in particular are you referring to?" Quatre asked.

"You tried to ignore her all afternoon. You siced your friends on her to harass her. And when we were called up to the front of the class room, you introduced her as 'The Wicked Witch of the East'"

My friends did not 'harass' her. And she really is the Wicked Witch of the East." He saw the look on his sister's face. "I'm telling the truth. Her radio call sign translates from Russian almost exactly into just that."

"Hmph. It was still rude thing to do to one of my friends."

"How long have you two been friends?" Quatre was disbelieving.

"I met her just today."

"Good. Stay away from her."

"That's a horrible thing to say!"

"I'm serious Pricilla. Dorothy Catalonia is bad news. She's dangerous, stay as far away from her as possible."

They had stopped walking. Pricilla was letting her anger show on her face, and she clenched her fists to her sides. "She can't be any more dangerous than you and your violent ways!" She started to storm off, but Quatre caught her shoulder.

"She's a hundred times more dangerous than me or any of my friends. What I did was against our family teachings of peace and kindness, but I did it because I felt I had to. What she did was perfectly in line with her family's teachings of warmongering and senseless slaughter, and she enjoyed every moment of it."

"What are you blathering about? Dorothy's a nice person. She never did anything like you!"

"You mean you don't know who she is?" Quatre peered in the light from the lampposts into Pricilla's face, and found nothing. "I first met Dorothy in the Sanq Kingdom. I was posing as a student so I could be a body guard for Princess Releena, and so that I could learn more about her version of total pacifism."

Pricilla stopped pulling away from him to listen, and he relinquished his grip on her, but was ready to catch her again if she rejected his next word.

"Dorothy Catalonia was there as a student from the Romafeller Foundation, and was there to spy on the kingdom and pass on information that would eventually lead to the country's downfall."

Pricilla looked stunned. "That's right." Quatre said. "They wanted to either wipe out the kingdom, or force Princess Releena to abandon her Total Pacifism to defend herself. Dorothy gleefully endangered the lives of an entire city, and it was only Releena's quick thinking that saved thousands from a horrible death."

"Dorothy stayed in the sidelines for a while, but showed up in the White Fang forces." Pricilla looked skeptical at this until he explained. "The Romafeller Foundation no longer suited her, because she was in love with the idea of a long and bloody war, and Romafeller had tried to become peaceful. She switched sides to be where the action was, and worked under Milliardo Peacecraft to start a war, and ultimately worked to help destroy all of earth. She thrives on the pain and death of others."

Pricilla frowned. "You're lying. You just don't like her because she was on the opposite side of the war as you!"

"I dislike her for personal reasons, and matters that took place after the war. But that doesn't make her any less of a danger."

"So you admit that you hate her!"

"I didn't say that. And the others don't hate her either, they just don't like her because of what she did to me."

"Did to you? What could she have possibly have done to you?" Pricilla looked angry, and then smug, as she seemed to come to a realization. "Were you and her…romantically invoved?"

"What? No. Not quite" Quatre started up the walk again. It was really getting late, and Pricilla needed to get settled in.

"You were, weren't you?" Pricilla seemed more her age, and Quatre was finally able to classify her personality. She seemed the hopeless romantic type.

"No." He said firmly.

"You protest too much. Geeze, if you're that bitter at your old girlfriend, then I guess it would be awkward if she and I became friends. Ok, I'll stay away. But you really need to lighten up. You didn't need to make up all that stuff about her being evil just to scare me away. Oh, my, Gawd, I can't wait to tell everyone that you're not really gay!"

"I beg your pardon?" Quatre said, suddenly felling like Dorothy was the last of his problems.

"Tee hee hee! What else did you expect? You never told us about any girlfriend, and all you do is hang out with a bunch of guys who've _also_ never had girlfriends. Everyone just assumed you were a bunch of homo's and would use living together at this school to have massive orgies and stuff!"

"They _WHAT_!"

"Don't blow your gasket. I'll make sure to set them to rights. Don't you worry!"

"Don't worry! I just found out my entire family thinks I'm _gay_!"

"Good night." Pricilla skipped up the steps to the dorm.

"Good…good night." Quatre stormed off.

**Poor, poor Quatre. Everybodys judging him, and many times their two plus two adds up to make nine. Stay tuned next time, same Kabochya place, same Kabochya channel, for more of his (and his friends) struggle for a life not spent surrounded by idiots. **


	8. Impact

Impact

"…So that's why everyone thinks that Dorothy and I were a couple."

"I don't know why you're so upset. Okay, maybe I do, but look at it this way; if a lie keeps her away better than the truth ever did, just let it be. And now you don't have to worry about people making wrong assumptions about you."

"It's still just not right."

David the Woman and Willis the lacrosse player exchanged looks. Whatever it was that was disturbing the homicidal rich kid had to be big. They wondered if it had anything to do with Quatre's old girlfriend, Dorothy, who had arrived just arrived yesterday. The gossips were having a feeding frenzy with this, as they told of a tragic romance that was worthy of Shakespeare. The story was of love stretching across enemy lines, even as she battled her family's ideals and he endured his family's unfair accusations of homosexuality.

Heero, and possibly Wufei, would have killed Pricilla for her lies, but she was not their business, so they tried instead to convince Quatre that it was for the better.

Willis made a comment about lacrosse positions, and David snorted, being a basketball fan. But Quatre had missed his chance at the team because he had been showing around all the new students, and the other four had missed it because they were spying on Quatre.

"…probably midfielder, because you can cover so much ground. I doubt any of you would make goalie, you're all more offensive than defensive.

"We'll have to see."

At this point, the coach walked by, spewing his usual mantra of "feel the burn, let's see some effort, pick it up ladies, don't make me give you more work!"

Willis, David, and most every other student lined up along the edge of the field doing pushups worked harder as the coach passed them, trying not to look like they were slacking. The pilots ignored the man, for they had long since proved themselves able to do more pushups than he had ever, or would ever, been able to do. It probably said something about their situation that it took them exactly as much effort to complete these assignments as it did to eat their dinner.

The bell finally rang, and the five skipped showers, since none of them had even broken a sweat in the September cool. They left the lockers, the halls, and the building, and trotted down the front steps, ready for homework and games of shogi and go. They didn't stop as they rounded the corner, even as they were intercepted.

"Hello Dorothy." Trowa said blandly, not looking at her.

"Quatre" said Dorothy, ignoring the others but keeping pace with them. "Have you heard?"

"I know about the rumor. Just ignore it, and it will go away."

"As much as I love the idea of us dating, that was not what I'm talking about. Releena's coming."

No one stopped as she had anticipated. "Why would she come here?" Trowa said "She's got work to do."

"She's due for some vacation time, so she's taking a week off. And I am one of her best friends. So she's coming back to her old school for a visit."

"What does that have to do with us?"

"Well, it's not like you all and she are strangers. And I promised her that she could see you guys play football, so I need to know when the games are, so she can schedule her vacation."

"Not going to happen" Heero said

"Why not? I can always just ask someone else for the dates and times."

"Ask away" Heero sounded annoyed. "We're not playing football."

"You're not? But everyone said…"

"You mean you listened to a rumor?" Wufei sneered at her. "there's rumors that you and Quatre were sleeping together, there's rumors that I'm some sort of playboy, there's rumors that all five of us are immortal, or gay, or secretly plotting to over throw the government, or are genetic experiments, or aliens, and you honestly believed a _rumor_?"

"There's no need to get snippy." Dorothy did not frown, for that would wrinkle her face, but slid into her 'I'm-better-than-you' mode. "Maybe if you spoke to more people, they wouldn't have to make so many assumptions."

Quatre was angry for once. "Like you _assumed_ that I would want to-"

"Don't pretend that you didn't enjoy it." Dorothy said smugly. "And any time you want a do-over, just make sure that your friends can't interrupt us." At first she sort of posed, trying to look like a model in the pink girl's school uniform, until Wufei jumped forward and, gripped her by the lapels of her coat, and lifted her off the ground to his eyelevel.

"You think you can joke about something like that, about what you did to him?" He growled, right up in her face about it. "How would you like something like that to happen to you? No? Just as I thought, you're nothing but a whore who's trying to make yourself feel stronger by preying on other people when they're down. You had better _hope_ that we don't start talking more, or you may find yourself crumbling when people find out the truth."

"You're calling me weak? Who took three weeks just to master the Zero System?"

Wufei began shaking her slightly, and lifted her a few more inches. Her toes were a good half-foot off the ground, and she fought his grip. "Do not seek to compare yourself to us just because you were guinea pigged on that toned-down piece of machinery! You couldn't last thirty seconds on the real systems capabilities!"

"I'll have you know that Zechs allowed me full reign on that thing. I was there for hours on end."

"But not at max power!"

"I was too!"

Trowa put his hand on Wufei's arm, and the other boy slowly put Dorothy down, still glaring at her as she smoothed out her uniform.

"You weren't under the real Zero System." Trowa said flatly. "You were given an adapted system, a prototype that was at a lower level, and could control multiple mobile suits at once. That's why you never experienced the same problems as the rest of us when trying to master it, and why we were able to out-strategize and beat you even though you controlled entire armies, and it was only five of us."

"Well obviously Mr. Marquise trusted me above anyone else to command his armies."

"Actually…" Quatre sucked up his nerve to talk to her. She had to know the truth. "He could have used anyone, the system would have taken care of the rest. But the modified system was untested, so they used you. If there was a glitch, and it made your brain boil in its own juices like they were afraid it would, then you were expendable."

Dorothy stared hard at Quatre, who did not flinch, fidget, or look away. Finally, she realized two things: he was recovering and was almost over her, and that he was telling the truth.

"He…Mr. Marquise trusted me! He needed me!" Dorothy didn't want to believe it, and protested with her fists clenched. "He gave me the job because he knew I could do it!"

Trowa picked up where Quatre left off. "He gave you the job because he knew that you wouldn't question it as long as you got to help and feel important. He gave you the job to get you out from underfoot. He gave you the job even though you are an untested, untrained, and know nothing about how to fight a battle, instead of risking losing someone more skilled and important."

"You were lucky." Heero added "He and the scientists were wrong about the modified system being dangerous, as far as anyone can see."

Dorothy didn't bother them again. None of them thought for a moment that she had given up on Quatre, whatever her intentions may be, but rather, that she may have come to the conclusion that they were just too strong when they were in a group, and was waiting until she could once again find him alone. They also weren't sure how she was handling the truth about the treatment of her in the White Fang army, or weather she had been able to convince herself that they had been lying.

They didn't care, either. They ignored her in the few classes she would share with one of them, and disregarded any questions imposed on them about what was going on with her. After some discussion, they reached the conclusion that she must have understood the threat of telling on her. Somehow, a criminal investigation into her actions would damage her position and reputation.

Pricilla proved inconsequential. She had no classes with any of them because she was so much younger, and she rarely joined them for meals, having found a clique of similarly minded young women who gossiped with a passion. The only real reason she had to talk to Quatre was to discuss family matters, which in this particular family almost always meant that the company was somehow involved. Quatre still couldn't decide where she stood in the big scheme of things, but still was of the impression that some one had sent her here to keep an eye on him. The other four found their lives Pricilla-free, as apparently someone had told the violence-hating girl just who her brother's friends were. She had reportedly thrown a temper tantrum when she realized she had spent an afternoon in the company of murderers, and from thence forth avoided them like the plague. Quatre was bothered slightly by the idea that the other two younger sisters might find themselves on his doorstep, but didn't let it worry him.

The only part of those two days that even slightly troubled them was the idea that Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian would be coming. True, Dorothy could have been lying, or been mistaken, or there might have been a change of plans. But nonetheless, it was a possibility that they could not ignore. Experience taught them that she was like an omen, and almost always brought trouble behind her. The most obvious scale she could tip would be their current lives in this school, meaning they could either be released into their old lives, or that someone had finally decided they needed to be punished. But as days slid by with out incident, it seemed less and less likely that she would actually visit.

Which was quite alright with them. Lacrosse was the highlight of their day, a way to get some adrenaline pumping. The first few practices were spent adjusting themselves, and then they moved on to playing practice games. It was oddly familiar, and while the distance between their skill and the rest of the team was apparent to all, when pitting pilot against pilot they could really have a challenge. Truthfully, they didn't get as into it as some of the other players, because they didn't see a need to kill themselves over it when the only real challenge was each other. But it was still fun, and these were boys who hadn't had this much fun in years, or maybe even their whole lives.

The quiet was snapped when Wufei didn't show up for PE one afternoon.

Mr. Gunter, the PE teacher, had to yell at them to break it up when they stopped working out and were just talking about what they should do about this. They had to quickly remind themselves that they were not in a war zone, this class was not a rendezvous point, and that any danger the heard of cow-people could throw their way was nothing to be worried about.

Wufei wasn't at the dorms after class was over, nor was he in the lunchroom, in a class talking to a teacher, or at their work out spot in the woods (which they still visited every morning).

It was Trowa who suggested that they try the front office. It seemed a novel idea to ask an authority figure for help, but at least they could see if he had been given detention or been sent to the principals office or something. A familiar face was waiting for them in the administration hall, but not the one they had been expecting.

"Miss Noin. What an unexpected surprise. To what do we owe the pleasure?" Duo had never really been interested in her, this was just how he had originally hidden his distrust of the former OZ officer, and the playful flirting had just never faded, even after his suspicions had been laid to rest.

"Hi Guys! I'm here for a scouting job."

"Is the school in some sort of trouble?" Heero asked.

"No. Nothing like that." She knew that he was the overly paranoid of the group, and didn't want him doing anything drastic. "This place is seeing some real posh visitors this year, you five, another member of the Winner family, the granddaughter of the ex-head of Romafeller, and all sorts of kids that are related to heads of states and hot shot business men. Were making sure everything is in tip-top shape."

"Uh huh." Duo looked at her in a way that said 'what do you think I am, stupid?'. "And why is one of the Preventers' top agents doing recon at a _school_?"

"It's two of their top agents." Wufei had come up behind them, along with Sally Po, two others in Preventers uniforms, and the Principal.

"So that's where you disappeared off too." Duo said laughingly.

"I was called out of class-"

"I know, I know. To make kissey-face with your old partner. You don't have to tell me." Duo held up his palms like he was blocking something. Wufei growled at him, while the principal looked on in wonder. It was weird enough to find out that this kid was a Preventer before he had been forced into school, but that he had been dating older women was a bit too much to accept.

"I was _not_, and never _have_-" Wufei started, but Lucrezia and Sally knew where this was headed.

"If you would step into the office, we can fill you in on the situation." Sally said

Wufei deflated. "Don't bother, I'll tell them later. You've got a schedule to keep."

"Excuse me young man," the principal interjected, "but you just _swore _not to tell a soul about what has been revealed to you in my office!"

"These boys are not a security risk." Lucrezia explained. "And they would probably figure it out for them selves even if Wufei didn't tell them. And lets face it, when we got our orders from higher up to consult Mr. Chang, it was pretty much understood that the vow of secrecy did not extend to his teammates."

"But he was right about that schedule." One of the unnamed agents tapped his watch. "We need to head out."

The four adults filed out the door at the end of the hallway into the sunlight, but there was a not-so-subtle exchange of looks between Sally and Wufei. Wufei was the first to look away, and before she was even at the door, he was already headed the other way.

Back at the dorms, Wufei filled them in in Russian, as they claimed places to rest in the room Trowa and Heero shared, on the beds, on the floor, in the only chair, and pulled out their homework.

"The Preventers headquarters neither confirms nor denies the possibility of Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian planning a vacation. They also neither confirm nor deny that she would like to take a visit on this vacation to see her old school, or her reasons for doing so. But they do confirm that they want a full assessment on the security of the school so as to prepare for any future attendance of various political or public figures."

"So Dorothy was telling the truth?"

"Can't say for sure. Knowing her, Releena dropped some miniscule comment on the subject, and then she used that to bolster some plan of hers. But there is no telling if someone worth protecting would visit, or if it would really be Releena. For all we know it's someone's Daddy coming to complain to a teacher about how their precious baby could possibly be having trouble in class."

"Seems reasonable. And the Preventers just wanted to get your opinion of how things were at the school?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I mean, why spend time and money on an official investigation that will tip people off and compromise the integrity of the report when you already have some one inside that has been there for weeks and can tell you everything you want to know?"

Truer words were never said. In fact, much of their musing turned out accurate, as one week later, the King of some random country personally came to yell at an art teacher about the correct letter grade of his sons report card. Three days after that, a wealthy business man pulled his daughter out of class and led her to his car, muttering about suing the school for having the audacity to give his precious child straight 'D's.

"Apparently this had nothing to do with Releena at all. They just sent out report cards, and they knew that some parents believe that just because they're important, their kid couldn't possibly be stupid or lazy." Duo did not voice his question about whether there had been report cards for him and his friends, or who they would send them to if there was.

"Releena? Who's that?" David the Woman was eavesdropping on them in the locker room, and they realized their mistake of assuming that no one would hear them in the din and echo of the place.

"Heero's girlfriend." Duo said in the same laughing tone that he had used earlier in the presence of the Preventers.

"You shut your mouth." Heero said threateningly. "The only relationship I want with her is the one we have now: no contact and never seeing each other."

"And I suppose what happened on L3 was just my imagination?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Ri-i-i-ght. I'll believe that when I believe Wufei's 'just co-workers' excuse. Which, by the way, will never happen."

"What will never happen is _anything_ between me and Miss Po." Wufei said sternly as he buttoned his shirt. "There is absolutely nothing there."

"Dude." Duo protested "I may be slightly stupid, but I'm not blind. When are you going to get off your high horse and admit that she's just waiting for you to be eighteen and legally up for grabs."

"Your words are as ridiculous as they are nonsense."

"What do I have to do, spell it out for you? If it weren't for the fact that you're a minor and she's like thirty or something, she'd already be introducing you to her family and hinting at marriage."

"She would not. And she's twenty-two, not thirty."

"See what I mean?" Duo looked to the others for support. "He even knows her birthday, of all things. I'll bet he doesn't know _our_ birthdays."

"If _you_ don't know when you were born, how do you expect me to?" Wufei was more than just a little frustrated as he stuffed his PE clothes in his gym locker.

Duo waved him off, then locked his own locker, feeling justified in believing that he had won this argument by the looks on the faces of the other three.

"Wait a minute. What's going on? Wuffy's dating thirty-year-old women? You don't have a birthday? How could you not have a birthday?" David the woman was finding out the hard way that even when they spoke in English, these young men were impossible to understand. He followed them out of the locker rooms, still whining. "Wait! Releena? Releena Dorlian? The politician? Heero's dating a politician?

Or do you mean Relina Smith, in biology? Huh? Huh? C'mon guys, tell meee!"


	9. Game Day

Game Day

"Red nine is nearing the crease, blocked by green, green thirteen has the ball. Feeds to green twelve, twelve to ten, _intercepted_! Red three has the ball, feeds to re- and green twenty slap-checks, feeds to green nineteen, nineteen to three, three to five, body-check, red six scoops a ground ball, cross-check by green nineteen, nineteen shoots, _he scores_!"

The crowds literally went wild. Green nineteen, who was coincidentally possibly the richest seventeen-year-old in existence, wandered over to green five, an eighteen-year-old named Aaron, and offered a hand up from the grass as the ref's whistles called for time for discussion. Neither young man said anything, but red six was glaring daggers at them from under his helmet. The speakers came on again, "personal foul, red six, illegal body-check, slashing." The player in question protested with loud gestures, but was led to the box by the referee.

Quatre spit out his mouth guard. "You okay?" He asked Aaron "Looked like he got you good."

"I'm all right. Glad I had my helmet on, though."

"Maybe you should be glad that he didn't aim for anyplace unguarded."

"Yeah, maybe." Aaron said, and the coach called him over, probably to ask the same thing Quatre had just done. Quatre and number three, Wufei, watched their fellow attack man jog off. They glanced at each other under the visors of the helmets, an if to say 'did you see that?'. Number twenty, Heero, looked at them from several yards further in field.

No one said anything, but they thought the same way; these players were getting more ruthless. Or desperate may be more like it. The score was 36-zip, and it was only the beginning of the third quarter. Quatre sighed and shook his head, and 3 and 20 took this as a sign to get back to their positions, Wufei off to the other side of the attack area, and Heeto to the center of mid-field. As he fitted the mouth piece back in, Quatre privately wondered if all their games would end up with the opposing team so intimidated that they would foul play. If the last four games were any indication, then yes.

Another face off, another goal, and two minutes in the box later, and red six was back on the field, still glaring at the players in the green jerseys. The effect was rather dulled, not just because the helmet diminished the facial visibility, but also because there was really nothing to back up the non-verbal threat. What was he going to do, wave his stick at them?

For anyone not interested in seeing well-orchestrated plays counteracted unsuccessfully by underhanded tactics, the rest of the game would be rather dull. Coach Fickes rotated the players after the third quarter, allowing some more non-deity-like students to have a go, and the opposing team scored two goals, but the ending score was still 52-2. There was the mandatory show of sportsmanship where the teams lined up and shook hands with each other, and then the Green team packed themselves back on the bus for the ride back to the hotel, where they would say over night before heading home in the morning. Crowing and victory chants rand out through the vehicle, and there were a lot of high-fives and fists pumped into the air.

Sports fever had gripped the school, and school spirit couldn't be higher. The lacrosse team enjoyed a particularly good year, for not only were they undefeated, but many people who previously ignored the minor sport became interested due to certain players. Granted, football games were still more popular and more crowded, but lacrosse still had its best showing ever.

School almost seemed worth it, if only for this.

Everything else still sucked though.

The school security and its heightened status was often put into play during sporting events. No less than four princes were on the starting lineup of the football team, and there were over twenty players on the varsity team alone. Classes often had visits of fathers who were visiting their sons at their Alma Matter, and football games were a watering hole for important people trying to forge alliances through the shared place of learning. The normal popularity contests that plagued schools world wide were hyperbolized in this institute, as people fought for friendships that might later lead to political of business advantage or even marriages. Avoiding this melodramatic and highly emotional arena was no easy task, but the Gundam pilots refused to be dragged in. While they all had various casual friendships with players of different teams, they made a point of refusing to come meet fathers and prime ministers and CEOs, or sit with them during games. Sitting in the foot ball stands, hidden in a crowd of relatively average people and trying to not attract attention to them selves, they gradually picked up on the intricacies of different fandoms.

One school event which they flat-out ignored were dances and parties. Heero had nothing positive to say about his experience at these events and between Quatre's reluctance to see Dorothy, and Wufei's fear of molestation, no one could come up with a reasonable excuse for them to go. Duo teased Heero and Wufei that they would gleeful go if certain females were present, but his friends all saw it for what it really was; just a cover for is own sorrow that he couldn't escort Hildi to one of these ritzy settings. While this place now seemed less awkward, it still didn't feel like home. Outside communications were still restricted, and Duo had received no word from her since he dad come to this place over a month ago.

With no news from the outside world, no interest in gossip, and no larger problems around, a common topic of conversation was just how to get around the restrictions placed on them.

"What exactly are they afraid of?"

No on could think of an anything. Quatre would probably be able to come up with a feasible hypothesis, but Quatre wasn't here, he was in his room having a conference call with some of his employees. The other four were sitting on the roof. Despite David the Woman's warning of trouble, they found the roof to be a very convenient place- it was quieter than the dining hall or one of the picnic tables out on the grounds, and was roomier than just sitting in a dorm room.

Augmenting the complexity of the situation was the fact that the school was targeting them personally. Other students were allowed personal computers, cell phones, private correspondence, heck, juniors and seniors were allowed cars, and all students were allowed trips off campus. These unfortunate five, on the other hand, were figuratively bound and gagged. They couldn't even get a TV or news paper.

The reality of the situation was that they were helpless. Somewhere out there were politicians who were deciding their fates, and there was nothing they could do until then except try and stay out of trouble.

The sun beat down on this roof top, making them squint, but they were not over warm. Fall was in full swing, and the thick uniforms, while still stiff, itchy, and useless, were at least thick enough to ward off the chill. They reclined in the angles of the bay windows of the upper floors. They spoke quietly and stepped lightly so as not to be heard from the ground, but they weren't worried about someone hearing them through the roof, for directly below them was an attic. Their classes were over, their homework finished, and practice had been canceled (because some one had thought it funny to mess whit the sprinkler system and now the playing field was flooded and muddy), so they, without entertainment or work, were bored.

A series of taps on a window signaled Quatre's arrival, and they heard him slide onto the roof. Staying low, he scooted over to join them.

"Iria is thinking of coming to one of our games." He reported, "Some of my other sisters might come too, though I'm not sure if that's a genuine show of loyalty, or an attempt to suck up to me."

He paused, but no one said anything, still gazing at the clouds. More for his own benefit than theirs, he continued.

"Winner Corporation stock is up three and a quarter. There was a factory fire on New Brazil that damaged some goods and machinery, but we're fully covered by insurance. On of my trustees was arrested for embezzling money, and my lawyers are trying to battle a class-action suit from parents whose children have had problems supposedly arising from my being a bad role model."

"Luthor Corp. is on its last legs, thanks to a joint effort between myself and Wayne Enterprises. I've been informed that eighteen party invitations, twenty-three dinner dates, and four Tee-times have been turned down on my behalf, being that I'm essentially under house arrest until further notice. My investment in construction materials was a whopping success, and Winner Building Co. is about to pay up big." He stretched back and sighed. "And we're investing in new, scientifically developed super-crops."

The boys took a moment to digest the information. Eventually, Trowa asked "Those lawyers…couldn't you tell them to try and get us out of here?"

"It doesn't work like that. No real charges have been brought against us for them to try and squirm out of." He shifted his gaze from side to side, looking for anything out of place, and his voice dropped even lower. "Some things have come to light. If you pester some one long enough, they're bound so slip up somewhere. And someone let it slip that we're here for...observation."

"Observation of what though? Are they trying to see if we're dangerous? Super-powered and inhuman? Patriotic? What are they afraid of?" Trowa was visibly frustrated as he repeated the question that they had voiced earlier.

"What ever it is they're looking for, they're not getting it. When questioned about the length of time I was expected to be away from my company, they admitted that this is taking much longer than they expected."

"Can't say I'm surprised. We really haven't given them anything…except for that little bit where they took away our weapons, we've acted like normal people." Heero added his thoughts in his usual monotone.

"But we aren't…normal. And it probably shows." Trowa hypothesized. "Our disguises might work short term in making people ignore us, but none of us can maintain a long-term illusion. Even you were suspect when you were here at the start of the war."

Heero 'harumph'ed at the suggestion that his cover had been penetrated, but said nothing.

"We're hiding something. They just don't know what." Quatre said. "They're waiting for one of us to slip up. They know that this is only a facade of civility, and that we're all on our best behavior."

"It's not all a façade. You've always acted like this." Trowa pointed out.

"But they know that I am capable of behaving differently." He kept his voice even, but they could feel his unease. "Guys…they know about Dorothy…"

"What!" The cry came all at once from the other four.

Quatre elaborated. "They don't know _everything_. If they did, then they would have done something. But we were careless. We were recorded when we were, um, talking to her…" He sort of mumbled the last part.

"Since when have there been cameras around? We haven't seen anything." Heero was indignant.

"They were professionally hidden. They didn't take any chances, and used top-of-the-line

equipment. They don't have them in places like our dorms, or the locker rooms, because that's unnecessary invasion of privacy." All the boys looked slightly relieved. "But the investigators were questioning people like my sisters about just what Dorothy did to make us so angry, and 'drop our masks', so to speak."

"Is, is there any chance that you're going to, you know, tell them what happened?" Trowa asked

Quatre took his time in answering, and sat up and drew his knees up to his chin. "No. No chance at all. I'll carry this to my grave. I wouldn't have told you guys, except you and Wufei already knew, and then you told Duo and Heero."

Trowa and Wufei looked slightly abashed about having spread around information that Quatre might have wanted to keep secret.

"It's not like it would solve anything. Dorothy's really skilled at avoiding consequences." Heero murmured.

"I have a question." Duo stated, finally jumping in and not just listening. "Wouldn't the footage of us threatening Dorothy be considered proof of something? Like, that we're deranged and stuff? I'd think that they'd act on anything they get."

"Remember, they're probably hoarding intelligence for later court use. I can't recall what exactly we said, but most of it would have just been you guys defending me from her. The rest can be written off as hard feelings and resentment from former enemies. That won't prove anything to either side, except maybe that Dorothy is still kind of proud of her definitely terrorist actions under Zechs Merquise."

"So it's inadmissible due to the fact that it's irrelevant. Normal people defend their friends, normal people bear grudges." Duo summed up.

"Pretty much, yeah."

"But we still don't know-" Trowa was cut off by the chiming of the bells. Time for dinner. Duo reached over and woke up Wufei, and they snuck back in and pretended that they had been occupying non-rule-breaking locations. At the table they were joined by Willis and Aaron, but even the excitement of the upcoming home game was dimmed by their private feelings of anxiety.

"One thing is for sure." Heero said in Japanese, ignoring the English-only speakers, and interrupting the discussion. "We're going to be here a long time. Because they won't get anything from us, and none of us is going to break."

"Don't be too hasty here, bro." Duo cautioned in English, adding to the guest's confusion. "Now that they know they can get us riled up, they may try to duplicate the event."

Heero should have knocked on wood to ward off bad luck.

"If you will open your books to page two-hundred and ninety four, you will see the table listing the acids and bases you will need to memorize." The Chem. Prof. droned, trying to tell them all about the stronger combinations containing Hydrogen and Hydroxide. Out side in the hallway, some one was laughing and talking in a booming voice, the words flowing in through the open door.

"Now if the, uh, let's see, the third person in every row, come up and get papers for every one in your row."

Quatre alighted to his feet and went to retrieve the worksheets. He waited patiently for his turn, mildly listening to what Amanda was saying about recognizing some of those same acids from the list of ingredients in her anti-wrinkle cream. He was fine until a familiar voice said "Professor Severus, how nice to see you again!" Quatre spun around as the teacher was gushing "Milliardo, how nice to-" , but the man never got further than that.

Heero's seat was right in front of Quatre's, two back from the front. The brown-haired teenager lunged, somehow shooting straight out of his chair and over Dolan the Calculator Boy's head, tackling Milliardo Peacecraft, a.k.a. Zechs Merquise. The two crashed into the Prof. Severus' desk, Zechs taking the brunt of the impact, and then Heero was on his feet, and kicked the blond upside the head, knocking his head into the edge of the desk yet again.

"No Heero!" Quatre cried, jumping forward to restrain his teammate. He slipped behind him, and was halfway into a headlock before Heero let out a verbal tirade of computer default commands in Japanese, and broke free. The crazed boy dashed forward to try and attack once again, aiming for where Prof Severus and Milliardo's companion with the booming voice were dragging Mr. Peacecraft to his feet. Quatre lunged forward and grabbed the back of Heero's uniform, pivoted, and tossed Heero down one of the isles between the desks. Heero slammed into the side of one, causing the girl sitting there to scream, and bounced and rolled a bit of ways, but recovered in a heartbeat, and vaulted over a desk into the next row for a clear path to where the two men were dragging the injured (but still conscious) ex-soldier toward the door. Quatre blocked his way, and launched a flying kick into Heero's face. Heero fell, but once he was on the ground he used his position to kick Quatre's feet out from under him, and he ran past toward his quarry.

Quatre let out an Arabic battle cry and tackled Heero much like Heero had Zechs, and the two shot past the three adults and out the door in to the hallway.

The students, the teacher, and two guests could hear them struggling and crashing all the way down the hall.

**I wonder what the average responce to a cliff-hanger is. But don't be too put out, I have a three-day weekend coming up, and if I don't blow it all on video games thenI should have a new chapter after then.**


	10. Repercussions

**As promised, the next chapter, made possible by the magic of the three-day weekend.**

Repercussions

The police men in black stood in stark contrast to the pastels and maroons of the dining hall, but they weren't there to be aesthetically pleasing. They looked grumpy, and while waiting for this to be finished, some students hypothesized whether it was deliberate because the officers wanted to look tough, or if they were enjoying this as little as all the civilians. Well, civilians and ex-military personnel who didn't count themselves as civilians but who were living a civilian lifestyle and had technically never been part of any legitimate army anyway. Either way, no one in the room looked particularly happy. And the people outside the room probably weren't too thrilled either, because it was dinner time and the cafeteria was off limits for now. No dinner for them, sigh.

At one end of the vast room were most of the people, thirty-odd students, a counselor or two, and three uniformed police officers who were in charge of keeping all these people present and accounted for. It did not escape even the densest of people that the three officers tended to gravitate to the vicinity to where the three remaining pilots were sitting, silent and serene. At the far end of the room every body could see where some detectives were interviewing witness number seventeen, out of earshot.

Despite their outward calm, Trowa, Wufei, and Duo were perhaps the most anxious. Their original attempts to talk about this had been shot down by the eavesdropping policemen, who objected to their use of anything other than Danish, the language of the land (this was putting a halt to many of the usual gossips, who mostly came from countries other then Denmark, and attended a mostly-English school). The trio was left to their own thoughts, and none of this was pretty.

First and foremost was the fact that Heero and Quatre hadn't been seen since they mowed down a Teachers Aid on their way out the door. So the two of them were out there, with almost the entire police force and fire department out there too to look for them. The three still stuck in the school wondered if the fighting had stopped, or if one of their friends had been over come by the other, and was now incapacitated, or dead. Heero wasn't exactly inspiring faith in his sanity, and Quatre, well, Quatre was against unnecessary violence, and was fiercely loyal to his friends, but he might have been force to take drastic actions against the crazed Heero.

Second was the vague and uncertain consequences this would mean for them over in…where ever the new government was debating their futures. In their own time, they reached the idea that jail would be a little like the prison camps from the war, and no one was in any particular hurry to return to one of those. And no one voiced the possibility that they might be executed as criminals, or be put down like rabid animals. These boys lived through a mission that came close to demanding their lives, but while they would have willingly given it up for their cause, they were of the understanding that their life was the most valuable thing they had, and weren't going to die for no cause at all.

Thirdly would be the changes in their immediate surroundings, from the presence of the law enforcement, and any shifting in how their peers thought of and treated them. Would they be branded as rejects, like some of the hapless students before them? Or would they be further immortalized, heralded as warriors and rebels with out a cause? Something like this was not going to be ignored.

Hypothesizing about one friend returning with the body of the other, mobs of students to swarm upon them for what ever reason, and the government ordering a ballistic missile strike on the school, they had to struggle to keep their minds in the realm of reason, and not visualize worst-case-scenarios. Especially the ballistic missile thing.

And other witness was called up, and another and another. Someone was dialed up by Prof. Severus, who was at the hospital with the injured man, and the police commandeered that student's cell phone to tell the professor to come back to the school for questioning. The police were getting edgy, from either the late hour, or some sort of unconscious signal from the students that they were getting antsy, the pilots in particular. These three tried not to give anything away, but they were having trouble. All their war instincts told them to get away, and they had to fight to get a hold on themselves and their training. Every so often a member of the search party would radio in, and report the same thing, absolutely nothing. They were combing the woods, scouting the city, but no one had any real idea which direction they had headed or how far they could have gone. The quartet of helicopters had already had to land and refuel twice, and by the estimation of anyone who knew what they were talking about (cough cough) were already three-quarters of the way into their latest tank.

Another witness came back and sat down with those already processed, and the next up took his turn. Five minutes into the interview, one of the doors at that end of the room opened quietly and admitted a very brown person. The fact that those doors had been ordered locked was the immediate concern of the officer that angrily strode over, and when the people from across the room saw that policeman fall to the floor, everybody immediately realized who this person was. The Gundam pilots were already on their feet and walking over there, and the trio of officers had to jog to catch up, hands at their sides ready to draw their firearms.

The boys greeted the mud-covered delinquent in a language that the officers didn't understand, so they crowded around and demanded compliance. The clean three explained the rules to the newcomer, who shrugged and said 'okay'.

"Did you get any trouble from the search party?" Trowa asked.

"Was that what they were? No, not really."

"How did you get past security?" one of the policemen demanded.

"I walked." The muddy boy droned tiredly.

"Where is the oth-" the same man tried another question, but was silenced with a wave of the boy's hand.

He faced his peers, ignoring the officers crowding around them and the curious faces of the rest of the students peering from half way across the room. "I think you guys need to see this. Heero's reached a new level of weird."

"Aww." Duo groaned. "He beat me to it."

"I'm serious. This is kinda freaky."

"Politics-type-freaky or Mobile-Doll-type-freaky?" Duo asked.

"Wing-Zero-for-the-first-time-on-no-sleep-type-freaky."

The three warriors went 'woah' and looked to Quatre for more information. He didn't provide any, however, he just said "I can't explain it. You really need to see this for yourselves. Come on." He turned to leave.

"You're not going anywhere." The officer growled, and grabbed Quatre by the shoulder. The officer then squealed as Quatre ripped out of that grip, and twisted to break fingers in sickening snaps. Officer Stupid was on his knees, and letting out mewling sound as Quatre said calmly, "do not touch me."

The other two officers drew their guns, only to be elbowed in the stomach and have their weapons snatched away.

No one tried to stop them after that as they filed one by one out the door.

"He's over here." Quatre kept his voice low to not attract any attention from the search party. Said party could be heard from here, crashing trough the woods and scaring the wildlife like only humans can. The four crowded around Heero, who was sitting on a rock in the middle of one of the small clearings that they often trained in. He had a look of utmost concentration on his face, and his arms were extended before him, palms down and fingers curled around controls that weren't there.

"Shit." Duo hissed. "He thinks he's in a Mobile Suit."

"Uh huh. And how long has he been like this?"

Quatre habitually looked at his watch, found the face to be smashed beyond recognition and bits of glass in the skin around it, and dropped his arm back down. "Since after sundown. He stared shouting 'initialize system' 'initialize system', and I finally made the mistake of shouting back 'system initialized.' And then he commanded me to ready missiles and fire up beam saber, and he sort of collapsed and…I only said it once. All it took was one reply from me, and now he's-he's, um…"

"This is bad. I've heard of soldiers having combat flashbacks, but this is just _wrong_. What do we do? How do we get him out of this?" Wufei sounded worried.

"Ideas? Any one?" Trowa looked at each of the others in turn.

"The only way I know of to deal with anything like this is to either let it pass, or knock them out." Quatre said sadly.

"Why didn't you do that then?"

"What, knock him out? Well, the way I was taught was to use sedatives, and all of mine were taken away. And I was warned that just hitting him would be a bad idea, something about how when he wakes up he's going to need to be as coherent as possible, and he can't do that if he has a concussion. And I don't trust myself to use pressure points."

"Why not?" Duo wanted to know.

Quatre held out his hands. They shook and twitched. "I've got too much adrenaline in my system, for one, I'd be too clumsy. And if that's not enough, Heero wasn't exactly holding back, and I smashed up my knuckles pretty good, and I need to give myself time to recover from the pressure points that he used on me as well."

"Wufei, would you do the honors?" Duo quipped.

"Glad to." He said and stepped forward. All though this, Heero had remained oblivious to what was going on around him, unaware that any of this was going on. It was disturbing how focused he looked even as Wufei touched places in his neck, and also how he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut once the deed was done.

Their first trip off campus was to take Heero to the hospital. They were aware that a nurse called the police as soon as they arrived, but couldn't bring themselves to care. Quatre tried to explain that medical insurance would not be a problem, but no one really listened. Heero was rushed up the emergency room for his broken ribs, and the look on the nurses' faces when they saw the amount of bruising on his body was kinda priceless, if you liked that sort of thing. As a doctor patched up the young man, his superior questioned the boys and waited for the police to arrive. He didn't get much from them, they remained silent of the possibility of their team mates descent into madness, holding on to the hope that he would be okay.

"So let me get this straight." The doctor said still fishing for information. "You bring in your friend from a fight, and expect me to treat him without proof of insurance, a parent or guardian's signature, and no semblance of a medical history, and all you can tell me is just how badly you beat the crud out of him."

"That sounds about right." Duo said cheerfully. "Is there anything else?"

The doctor frowned, and wondered when the police would get here.

"You wouldn't be able to get a release form for treatment for him any way." Quatre said more seriously. "And like I keep trying to tell you, I don't think he has insurance, but the rest of us have more than enough to cover any bills on his behalf."

The Doctor didn't look any happier. "Is there any thing at all you can give me to work with here?"

The group was silent, looking up at him from their chairs out side Heero's room. "Well," Quatre said, "I could call my sister and get her permission for treatment."

"How would she be able to give permission to treat an unrelated person?" the doctor fussed.

"She wouldn't. But she would be able to give you permission to treat me, and then you would at least be able to verify that we have some sort of income, and be able to get a legal adult to take responsibility for all this."

"What would you be treated for?"

"I think the most stressing problem would be all my broken toes." The doctor stared at him. "Other than that it's just getting antiseptic on my cuts, and making sure I didn't crack any of my knuckles."

A passing nurse stopped in her tracks, and stood side by side with the dumbfounded Md.

"Why," the doctor finally asked, "did you not mention that you need medical attention?"

"You didn't ask."

Quatre had to be cut out of his shoes. Luckily, it was around lunch time for his sisters on the colony, so Trowa didn't even have to wake anybody up when he made the call in his stead. A very pissed off detective strode angrily into Heero's room while they were gone, and Duo had to fend off his angry questions by himself until Wufei came back, offering no explanations of his absence, but the Chinese boy had better luck in getting the man to listen to reason.

"You can question him later." In the meantime, you can get in touch with my superiors."

"Your superiors?" the detective sneered. "And who would that be?

"General Une of the Preventers."

The detective laughed. "Nice try boy, but I'm not going to call up and annoy the leader of all military forces in this region just to get her mad at me. You'll have to do better than that to get rid of me."

Duo placed a hand on Wufei's shoulder, not needing to have another friend attack a public figure, even if he was a pompous idiot.

The man's sneer widened. "You're all coming down to the station, and we'll have a nice talk about assault."

"That's not going to happen." Wufei said coldly. "The only one with charges against them is Heero, and he is already in hospital custody." He was counting on the hope that this man either didn't know, or would have forgotten, the fact that four different police officers had been attacked back at the school.

"I'll just need you for questioning." The man wasn't giving up.

"Why?" Duo said, "We didn't witness what happened, and all we did was haul Heero to the hospital."

"We need to be getting back to school." Wufei said. "We're going to be in a lot of trouble." Now he was playing on the fact that this man really just wanted to cause them grief, and was pointing out that there was a lot more problems facing them back on campus than the officer could cause for them.

It took a while longer, but they managed to ditch the detective and start planning to contain this. They were worried what would happen if Heero was still crazy when he woke up, but they had no real way of changing that. Quatre would spend the night in the hospital, under the watching eye of the police, who put the two boys in the same room to make them easier to keep an eye on, unknowingly playing right into the pilots' hands.

The police were slightly distressed when the other three disappeared again, right out of the hospital, but they weren't missing for long, reappearing back at the school in due time.

Thankfully, no one really wanted to mess with them, so they could finally talk about all this.

"Zechs was in that same hospital." Wufei said over his geography homework. "Heero stabbed him with a pencil. They would have considered that part an accident, if he just had it in his hand when he jumped him, but then they realized that Zechs had been stabbed three times, and not just once. They had to fish pieces out of his muscle wall. He's also got a minor skull fracture, and a broken nose."

"Heero and Quatre weren't much better off." Trowa said softly.

"What about the officers we hurt, how are they doing?"

"Fine, as far as I can tell. There have been no complications worth mentioning."

"I wonder how long it will be before they realize they're missing these." Duo was playing with the gun he snatched from the guard.

"I don't know." Wufei said. "Where is the other one?"

"I hid it out in the woods." Trowa explained. "I didn't want to get caught with it on me."

"Good idea. I should probably hide this one." Duo said and placed it in his desk drawer until later. He sighed. "But I don't know why we're bothering. They know we took them, and we won't be able to get much use out of them. We don't have any extra bullets."

The room was silent for a while they gathered their thoughts and got their home work out of the way, until the door burst open, sending all three to their feet in anticipation of trouble. They needn't have bothered, it was only Toni, Wufei's roommate.

"So incredible, never going to believe this back home, it's just, just, Yeaaaah!" The boy was having trouble forming coherent sentences, and was randomly switching from English, the language of the school, Danish, the language of the country, and Italian, his first language. They watched him rant for a few minutes, and settled back down, not caring about him at all.

**I am debating on whether or not to use a line from one of my reviewers in my fic. If I do, then I will be sure to name the source. So hey, one of you lucy reviewers might end up mentioned in this thing. Its like winning the lottery by signing your name at the top of your homework. And all those people who didn't review, well, think of this as an incentive.**


	11. Statements and Comments

**I've been looking over the fic as it appears on and am appalled to see that I have so many mistakes in it. Sigh. I really need to find a beta reader.Any one out there interested? No one on this end cares about what I write. **

Statements and Comments

The glaring light of the small room hurt his eyes a little, but that was almost irrelevant. Trowa was familiar with the scare tactics that most places used on criminal suspects when reason didn't seem to be working.

This place was undecorated, with only the table and chairs, one of which he was sitting in, and the 'mirror' that was really a one-way window on the eastern wall. Trowa sat at the north end of the table, counting seconds in his head, wishing he still had a watch. His mind was speeding at a rapid pace, first reciting the math models he had to know for physics class, then jumping over to what he knew so far about their predicament, and then over to wondering if Napoleon was one of Heero's ancestors (they both were short and crazy. Well, okay, Heero had grown a lot in the past two years, they all had, probably because they were getting ample sleep and not living off of space rations, which probably had been stunting their growth). Basically he let his mind wander, staring off into space, but not at the door, not at the window, not at the neat stack of papers in front of him. He wondered what the others were doing.

After what he deemed to be a hundred and sixteen minutes, plus what ever time he had spent filling out the papers, the door in the southeastern corner, on the far side of the window, creaked open. Stepping in was a uniformed officer, and two men in business suits, one in his late thirties, the other probably in his early fifties. The officer stayed by the door while the detectives took the remaining chairs, both sitting across from him, their faces brought into high relief by the overhead light bulb. One of them motioned for the papers, and Trowa slid them over.

The older one flipped through the papers while the younger one tried to smile.

"This is a bit of a nasty business, but it should get cleared up easily enough. Your school sent over your homework for today, so you won't be missing anything in the meantime." The man said. He had sandy blonde hair, so dark that it was almost brown, and light blue eyes.

Trowa's only response was a slight raising of his eyebrows. The man must have misinterpreted that look.

"Yeah, I know. All this trouble and you still can't get a break from school. You'd think they'd let you slide this one time, but that's teachers for you."

Trowa figured that this one would be the nicer of the two, the one that would try and get his trust and convince him to open up. The older detective made a coughing sound, and set the paperwork down.

"I am Detective Maurice, and this is Detective Michals. We're here to talk to you about what happened yesterday." The older detective said. He was balding a little, and had salt-and-pepper hair. Trowa nodded but said nothing. "If at any time you feel you need a lawyer, you are within your rights to ask for one." Trowa again was silent.

"We have had some trouble contacting your legal guardian." Det. Maurice stated.

"That's because I don't have one." Trowa said equally as simply.

"Are you a ward of the state then?"

"I don't think so. To my knowledge, I'm not even a citizen."

"Doesn't surprise me, most of the kids up at that school are foreigners." He took a pen out of his jacket pocket, and clicked it open. "Where are you from?"

"The L3 colony cluster." Trowa said.

"Which part?"

"All parts. I traveled a lot."

Det. Michals had taken over reading Trowa's papers. "You left a lot of blank spots. And you didn't even put in your name."

"My name is irrelevant."

"No, it's not." Det. Maurice almost growled. "I don't care how cool you think you are, but you need give us a name."

"Trowa Barton. That's t-r-o-w-a-b-a-r-t-o-n." He spelled out his current alias for them, and Det Michals wrote it down.

"That's better." Maurice grumbled.

"There's a lot of other things missing." Det. Michals said, and slid the packet half way over the table.

"I filled out as much as I could."

Det Maurice snatched back the papers. "Don't be difficult. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner you can go home…er, back to school."

"I'm not trying to be difficult." Trowa said, but only Det Michals seemed to hear.

"What's your social security number?" Det Maurice demanded.

"I don't have one."

"Place of birth?"

"I don't know."

"Parents names?"

"I don't know."

This last part seemed to take a moment to sink in. True, they probably both thought he was being difficult before, despite Detective Michals seemingly open and friendly nature, but now he had given them a reason to suspect otherwise.

"Bithdate."

"I think I'm seventeen."

Again, a nanosecond pause.

"That's not what I asked."

"Unfortunately, I really have no better answer for you."

"Next of kin?"

"Hmm." Trowa wasn't sure how to answer this. "I don't really have any. You could just put down one of the others, we tend to just get lumped together for these things anyway," This did not need further explanation. "There's also a girl back home who's like a sister to me."

"But no blood relatives?"

"Not unless I've got a bastard child or two running around somewhere."

They systematically went through the papers, trying to get him to tell them where he had gone school previously, driver's license, birth certificate, anything they could use to confirm who he was. There were about five sheets of paper that Trowa had filled out to the best of his ability, but most of the spaces were still blank. About halfway through, the usually passive young man had reached his limit of this.

"I told you that I had filled out all that I could. Is there a point in going through all this when I have nothing more to add?"

"I see you have put down prior military service." Det. Michals pointed out. "How did you get into the royal armed forces without any identification?"

"I lied."

The men blinked at him. "About what?"

"Just about everything." He could see they provably didn't understand. "Look, I only mentioned it because it specifically asked about 'Prior military enlistment,' and it's true that I was enlisted. But I was only there to spy on General Une, so you can't expect me to have been truthful in what I put down on the recruitment forms."

"You were a spy?" Det. Michals said in disbelief, but Det. Maurice hushed him up.

"Boy, am I to understand that you have no legal means of identifying yourself?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"You have an employment history. How did you manage that, or did you lie to them to?"

"At first, yeah, I was using my job as a cover for during the war. But I made a lot of friends, and I liked it there, so they let me back in after the fighting stopped, no questions asked."

Det. Maurice humphed, but moved on. "Where were you at one-forty-five on November second, one-nine-seven?"

"Um, in Spanish class."

"Can anyone vouch for you."

"My friend Duo. The Spanish teacher, Mrs. Ole. And about fifteen other kids my age. Oh, and I think there might be some security footage."

"What do you know about what happened in class room 1704 at that time, and the actions of one Yui Heero?"

"Heero attacked Zechs."

The detectives seemed a little surprised for some reason. Maybe they had expected him to deny the possibility of Heero's guilt.

"And where did you hear this from."

"Duo and I were escorted to the dining hall after class let out. We heard some bits of what happened, namely, that Heero and Quatre had gotten into a fight, and people kept describing the third party to us. And then someone said that they recognized Milliardo Peacecraft from his television address two years ago, and we were able to piece together most of it from there. And then Quatre told us more after he got back.

"Where were you at eight-fifteen on the same day?"

"I don't know." The detectives didn't like this answer, so he hurried to clarify. "I don't have a watch, so I'm not sure of specific times."

Det Maurice took a deep breath. "Can you describe the events taking place, starting in the school dining hall after sunset, and ending when you returned to school…much later."

"Quatre came in the southwest entrance. He told us there was something wrong with Heero, so we went to get him. We carried him to the hospital, checked him and Quatre in, and then went back to campus."

"In more detail, please. Specifically, the altercation between you and your friends, and four officers of the law."

'Ah', Thought Trowa. 'We get to the point.'

"Three policemen walked over with us to meet Quatre. Quatre was trying to tell us about Heero, but the cops interrupted. He finally got to finish, and we went to go get Heero. One of the cops grabbed Quatre, and he didn't like that." This, perhaps, was an understatement. "The other two cops tried to stop him, and the rest of us stopped them. Then we left."

Det. Michals was taking notes. Det Maurice continued. "Where did Mr. Winner lead you to collect your friend?"

"To where he had left him."

"Please be more specific."

"Somewhere in the woods."

"At any time, did you encounter people in the woods, members of the search team out looking for your friends?"

"No. we avoided them completely."

"Are you certain?"

"Absolutely. No one ever finds us unless we want to be found." There was a veiled statement of power here. The detectives were smart enough to get the idea that this kid and his friends had been brought in _only because_ _we let you_.

"Where do you go next?"

"The nearest hospital."

"Did you go directly there?"

"No." Det Michals looked up from his notes, seeming to think that this was going to be good. "We didn't really know were the hospital was, so we might have wandered around a little bit. We went there as quickly as we could, though." Det. Michals was slightly disappointed.

"What happened at the hospital?"

"We had some trouble getting medical attention for Heero. He didn't have any of the legal stuff, or a medial history, so they weren't too willing to help out. I think they were waiting for the police to arrive and take care of things, too. We eventually got Heero a doctor and a room, and we had to go through much of the same thing for Quatre, but at least he was awake to answer questions. We went back to school after that."

"Why didn't you stay at the hospital with your friends?"

"We had to get back to our dorms before curfew."

Det. Maurice snorted. "Don't play me kid." He muttered. "Were you three not informed by the officers at the scene to stay put and come in for questioning?"

"I was, I'm not sure about the others, though."

"And why did you disregard that request?"

"Because it was a request, not an order."

"And do you usually ignore officers of the law?"

Trowa shrugged. "I haven't had much experience with them."

"And why did you this time?"

"Because I didn't care."

"Why not?"

"'Why not?' Why would I? They haven't got any authority over me."

"A police officer is a representative of the law, the government, and the country. They have quite a bit of authority."

"Not my government. Not my country. It's not even really my planet. And I haven't done anything wrong, so the law can't touch me."

Det. Maurice grumbled again. "When you entered that posh school of yours, you signed agreements to abide by school and local law-."

"I signed nothing." Trowa allowed a small dip in his voice, showing his own impatience. "Nor did any of the others. We were dragged here against our will to be paraded in front of rich, fat, _important_ people, who study us like lab rats for signs of disease and weakness. It wasn't our idea to come here, and we certainly weren't given any choice in the matter."

The two men looked slightly stunned, and Trowa realized that he had been using the tone he usually reserved for people he was about to kill. They were probably scared. Whoopsie.

Any further unpleasantness was stopped when a beeper went off. Both men checked their little gadget at the same time, and then Det. Maurice motioned to ward the door.

"We'll be right back." Det Michals followed his graying and balding partner.

Trowa was left with the distinct feeling that someone behind the glass had called them back before they agitated him to much. He didn't like the feeling of being watched.

He wondered what the others were doing.

Heero groggily woke up some time around noon. Quatre was about six feet away in a bed of his own, reading a text book, and the millionaire put his reading material away as he heard his friend stir.

"Heero-san, ogenki desu ka."

"Iie, chigaimas-s-s…" one hand flew to his temple, and investigate the pounding there. He dimly heard Quatre's voice ask for someone to get the doctor, and the thudding of feet signaled that they were, indeed, not alone in this room. Heero sluggishly tried to get his body moving, but he seemed rather numb, and felt like all his limbs were extra heavy. He recognized the effects of some kind of sedative, or painkiller.

"Quatre-san?" He questioned weakly, "Why can't I move?"

"They pumped you full of drugs. I can vouch that it wasn't anything damaging, but I couldn't order them not to put the stuff in you. I have no authority here."

"S'okay." He was having trouble getting his lips to move. More feet arrived, and he heard some one talking in Danish to him, but couldn't get his brain to work and decipher what was being said. Feeling rather apathetic about it, he just ignored the voice, and the blurry face that oozed into his line of vision.

"Quatre-san?" He weakly called again. "Why am I here?"

"There was a fight."

"Hnnn." Heero digested this. He was content in the knowledge that Quatre would tell him details later. "Quatre-san?

"Hai?"

"Koko wa doko desu ka."

"Koko wa byouin desu."

Quatre was patient with his friend, knowing from experience that no being able to control one's self was a scary experience. The doctor contented himself with checking over the teen, shining light in his eyes, taking a pulse, looking over the charts on what he was on. This man seemed more reasonable than the police that periodically could be heard yelling out in the halls all through the night, and didn't try to force Heero to talk in a familiar language. He relied on Quatre for that.

"How is he doing?" the doctor asked Quatre.

"He seems disoriented. No quite awake yet. But he's getting there."

"What language is that?"

"Japanese. We think it's his first language."

"He certainly doesn't _look_ Japanese."

"Not surprising, his coloring is all wrong. But he has an Asian face, and he remembers speaking Japanese as a child, so we just assume that he's half and half.

"Do you really have no idea where he comes from?"

Quatre deemed this as too personal, and the doctor got the hint and didn't pry. He inspected Quatre much the same way as he had Heero, and left after a word with the guard.

Evidently, someone had been waiting for the prisoner to wake up, as a plainclothes detective dashed through the door moments later. He had a note pad and pen in hand, and stalked past Quatre's bed over to Heero's.

"Hey you, kid." He called to Heero, who was staring blankly at the ceiling. "I have to talk to you." He got no response, so he reached over and shook Heero gently by the shoulder. Heero's hand weakly gripped the man's wrist and tried to pull him off, and his eyes found the man's face.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Quatre advised. "He's awake, yes, but he's still mostly out of it. You can ask him questions later."

"Quatre-san? Kono hito wa dare desu ka."

Quatre assured him that it was nobody bad, and the detective stopped bothering Heero, and looked to Quatre instead.

"You're that other one."

"That other one what?" Quatre said seriously.

"That other soldier that piloted a Gundam. You're one of them."

"Yes, that would be me."

"I need to ask you a few questions."

"I already gave my statement to the police. And further remarks on the matter will be made in the presence of my lawyer."

The detective couldn't argue with that.

"Quatre-san?" Heero called. When Quatre didn't answer, he called out again.

"Hai, Heero-san?"

"Where'd the Wing Zero go?"

"You blew it up, remember?

"Oh, right."

"What did he say?" the detective asked.

"He's still babbling. Thinks he's fifteen again."

"Ah. I see." The detective looked down at his pad of paper, but couldn't think of anything to write.

The matter was quickly resolved when General Une herself showed up on the doorstep of police headquarters, and started pulling rank. Wufei had used his one phone call to dial up his old work, and now not only did the police commissioner have to explain why he was interfering with a matter of global importance, but Wufei also got to inwardly gloat as he rubbed the fact that he really _did_ know General Une in the face of the officer who had brushed it off earlier at the hospital. The three weren't off completely; there was still the fact that they had put two police officers in the hospital, and the matter of the missing firearms, but they were escorted back to school under the watchful eyes of the Preventers. They arrived in time for a quick lunch, and were allowed to attend classes as long as they stayed close to their assigned babysitters. Coach excused them from P.E. so that they could go around and talk to their teachers about the classes they missed, and get another copy of the homework, seeing as they had left the assignments back at the police station.

They were allowed to go visit Quatre and Heero after that. Officially, they were going for a questioning session at the hospital, but they were grateful for small favors.

The General was all business, and cut them no visible slack just because of a common past. She gathered their statements, and put them under house arrest at the school until this was cleared up. The boys weren't sure if she was joking or not, for she looked so serious, but it just wasn't like her to realize that they had been off campus more often in the last twenty-four hours than they had been in the last two months, or that they were breaking that arrest by coming to the hospital, or that Heero and Quatre should probably be confined to the hospital instead, especially if Heero really was crazy.

He didn't seem crazy (ier than usual). He was pulling out from under the last of the drugs when they came in, and after his questioning, he had been administered more (doctors orders), and had promptly gone to sleep. After a sharp conversation with a nervous doctor, the General extended the injured boys arrest to a three week furlough in the hospital. Quatre was the only one who protested, saying he would miss school, and that his injuries were not that serious, but then the nurse came in to administer the painkillers for his broken digits, and the blonde's next move was to start flirting with the General herself. That might have weakened his argument just a little.

Wufei was never prouder of his former boss than when he and Trowa and Duo realized her motives behind containing Quatre in the hospital when it wasn't absolutely necessary.

"Miss Winner! Care to comment on your brother's newest transgression against your family policy on violence?"

Pricilla ducked her head and quietly said 'no comment.'

"Over here, Miss Winner! What do you think of your brother's involvement in the war?"

"Who is your brother seeing after his emotionally devastating relationship with Dorothy Catalonia?"

"Miss Winner! Pricilla? Miss Winner?" Pricilla hunched lower, and hid behind one of her friends, and said more loudly and firmly 'No comment!"

A swarm of reporters swooped down on the school, trying to talk to any one who knew anything about what had happened. The witnesses were cautioned by the Preventers that this was an ongoing investigation, and that any media involvement may result in legal action taken against the person who talked. The newspapers and T.V. stations realized it was probably a good idea to steer clear of anyone who might anger the police, and so turned to whoever could give them the juiciest second-hand point of view on the situation. And with the school housing so many public figures, the reporters knew every loophole in the rule of visitation, and had had years to fight for the right to interview (harass) people on school grounds.

For once it was a good thing that Quatre had so many sisters. Pricilla had been pounced on by older, wiser members of the family who knew her love of attention and gossip. She had been threatened in so many ways by so many people to keep her mouth shut that it actually got through that she shouldn't do anything to damage the company's image any further.

It was amazing. One international incident that balanced millions of dollars was all it took to get that girl to finally shut up.

**Longest. Chapter. Ever.**


	12. Trying to Divide and Conquer

**Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, exacly one day after getting out of school, the next chapter in _Prisoner of Peace_. Sorry about the wait. This year has been a real bitch, and I'm not just talking about school. **

Quatre was disobeying the doctor's orders.

He walked slower than usual most of the time, careful of the tenderness of his foot, but he still refused to wear the cast. As he had tried to explain to the doctor, he healed fast, and the bones were all better, just look at the x-rays. But medical miracle or no, people in the medical profession still had expected him to limp around with a cast for another few weeks, not understanding that his main concern was making sure that his muscles didn't deteriorate from disuse.

"People will take it as a sign of rebelliousness and insubordination." Lady Une said from behind her tea.

"Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Quatre looked and felt tired, lethargic from too much inactivity, and drained from too many pills. He stared bleakly into his empty cup, waiting for someone else to make the effort of small talk. Given that present company included his loud-mouthed little sister and the disillusioned principal, and one of the counselors, he didn't think that it would be too long before someone filled in the awkward silence. When the only sound for several minutes was the clinking of tea cups on saucers and the sipping of tea, he again looked tiredly around, wishing this would hurry up so he could get on with tackling the huge pile of make-up work that awaited him. But they all stayed silent, eyeing him carefully

He wondered what they were thinking, then dismissed it as irrelevant. He really just didn't care at this point.

Milliardo Peacecraft entered the room, ending the wait until Lady Une would address official business. He walked stiffly over to sit (equally stiffly, he did just get released from the hospital) on a couch by one of the counselors, and accepted a cup of tea from the vice principal.

Zechs and Quatre locked eyes across the table. One person was silently saying 'I'm tired,' and the other was saying 'hoo, boy, you're going to get it now.'

Lady Une set down her cup of tea, and drew every one's attention over to her.

"The police," she said, "have completed their investigation of the events of October the nineteenth."

"Sure took them long enough, considering how straightforward it was." Quatre muttered.

"So you have a good idea of what they concluded?" she asked in her usual airy tone.

"I know what actually happened, because I was there. However, I have lost all faith in people's ability to take simple evidence and come to any accurate conclusion."

Lady Une sighed, staring straight at Quatre and ignoring the rest of the room full of people. "Things are not looking good, Mr. Winner. There is this, yes, but there are many other things that need to be taken into account."

She paused to make sure he was listening. "Your teachers and fellow students have found your and your friend's behaviors to be rather unnerving. You avoid the company of most others."

"No crime in being a loner."

"You deliberately exclude people from your lives by employing your knowledge of foreign languages."

"We're a diverse group. We all have different 'first languages,' and act accordingly."

"You treat every day, every assignment, every choice, as if you were still in the military."

"Old habits die hard."

"You act as if you were preparing to go back to the front lines at any moment."

Quatre had nothing to say to that.

"You routinely leave in the middle of the night, and practice as if you were expecting to have to fight someone soon."

"Four A.M. is hardly 'in the middle of the night.'"

"Maybe, but it still doesn't explain why you and the others actively practice your hand-to-hand combat in secret."

Quatre wondered how she knew that.

"Your teachers have noticed that you seem to treat your classes as if it were some sort of fact-finding mission. You play sports as if they were war games. And you have proved hostile to both fellow students and visiting guests."

04 looked again at Zechs. He suddenly felt cornered, and wondered just what these people wanted from him.

"Pinpointing the proper course of action at this point is some what tricky, given the many unknown factors. But the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, and this school cannot continue to offer you sanctuary if you and your friends will pose a danger."

"The school board is willing to take into account your rather unique experiences in the war." Interrupted the principal. "And appropriate therapy and counseling will be made available where there is a need. But only where keeping on an individual does not put the rest of our charges in harms way. For the rest, well…"

"You are not under suspicion, Mr. Winner. Your actions may have saved Mr. Peacecraft's life." Said Une.

"For which you have my eternal gratitude." Zechs drawled.

"But at this time we area calling upon you to give an honest evaluation of your peers." Lady Une took back the floor.

"An honest evaluation." Quatre said after a pause. "Or, in other words, you want me to tell you if the others are crazy."

"In a nutshell, yes." Said the counselor. Quatre thought that he might be a psychologist, but couldn't remember.

"Let me ask you something." Quatre said. "You pulled together a team of the world's most renowned terrorists and murderers, and you are only now wondering if they might somehow pose a threat?"

The adults looked slightly uncomfortable at this oversight, and to his left, Pricilla made a squeak.

"General public opinion of your actions aside, there was no reason at the time to suspect that there would be problems of this nature." Lady Une said.

"No reason? What about the fact that Heero's original purpose for coming here two years ago was to assassinate Relena Peacecraft? Or that a sizable piece of the grounds was damaged when he stared fighting in his MS right above your heads with no regard to any one's safety?"

"Heero Yui does seem to be at the heart of the problem." Said that counselor/psychologist. "What can you tell us about him?"

"You want me to tell you if Heero is dangerous? Honestly?" Quatre looked incredulous. "Absolutely."

"You are confirming that Heeor Yui is a genuine threat to the safety of this school's inhabitants?"

"I'm confirming that Heero Yui is a trained soldier. That he's killed more people than could fit in this school. And that you may have taken away his tools, but he is still a highly skilled dealer of death. But you're forgetting that he risked his life to create this peace that you all enjoying. Is he dangerous? Certainly, and so are all the rest of us."

"Mr. Winner," said another counselor, "if you do no cooperate, then we will be forced to reconsider our stand on the possibility of removing you along with your fellows."

"I can tell you right now that your idea to treat me different than the others is bullshit."

Lady Une made a show of pulling out a small brief case, and opening it. "I have here the records of your statements to the police." She rifled through some folders. "Some of your fellows proved uncooperative at that time as well. I am personally interested in the information on Trowa Barton."

She placed a stack of papers that were stapled together down on the low tea table, and slid it across, closer to Quatre. He took it as she retrieved another one.

"Mr. Barton was one of the finest soldiers I had the pleasure of having in my service."

"Surely you realize that he was only there to spy on you." Quatre said bitterly. One of the papers was similar to what he had had to fill out for the police, and had Trowa's name filled in the appropriate places. The other was a similar form with the same name, but this was an application and record of military service for the Oz army.

"I had come to that conclusion, yes. But I am curious as to how he was able to pull off such a brilliant dupe of the system. His unprecedented rise in the ranks warranted a background check more than once, and no one found any thing suspicious. But now that he is no longer living in deceit, there are so many irregularities on him that one must assume he is hiding something."

"I don't know why you're telling me this."

"It is the belief of the administration that Mr. Barton is hiding some duplicitous deeds in his past." Said the principal.

"Trowa is hardly ashamed of his past. Why don't you just ask him to explain things instead of beating around the bush?"

Again the faces of the company showed their unease at having overlooked such a simple solution.

"Quatre." Zechs spoke up for once, and all others fell silent. "I know what it is like to have to re-learn what it is to live a civilian's life. But now I need you to tell us simply: do you think that your group would benefit from psychological therapy? Would counseling help you to fit in better? And most importantly, would getting help help you five to undo what happened to your minds in the war?"

Quatre regarded Zechs respectfully, and gave a wry smile when he had finished contemplating his words.

"_Undo_ what happened to our minds? Just what do you think happened to us out there?" Quate found himself almost gleeful a finding the end of the problem. "This is not case of post-traumatic stress disorder, or hysterical neurosis. Nothing happened to our heads as a direct result of being in war. This is not something that can just be undone."

"In the case of irreconcilable disruptive behavior, you will all have to be expelled from the school." The principal said blandly.

"More tea?" the vice principal offered.

"Yes please." The Principal offered his cup. "As of now, you five are still with out any sort of permanent guardian, and the school will take responsibility of finding you suitable homes."

"And you, sir?" the vice principal offered tea to Quatre from across the table. With one hand below the saucer and the other curled around his cup, Quatre provided the drinking receptacle to be filled at arms length.

"Most of your fellow delinquents would most likely be placed in some sort of asylum. And since your family situation seems to be nowhere near close to being resolved, a non-related guardian that they all agreed on has been confirmed."

"Hmm?" Quatre was mildly surprised that his sisters could agree on anything, but focused on the slow but steady stream of dark liquid into his cup.

"Yes. One Madaline Catalonia, who is the mother of Miss Dorothy-"

He was cut off by a _snap_ that filled the room. The vice principal quickly pulled back the tea pot, but was too late to stop the waterfall of drink that dribbled onto the tablecloth from between Quatre's fingers. The boy stared at the Principal wide-eyed, and heedless of the fact that he had gripped the cup so firmly that it had cracked in his hands, and was now cutting into his hands as tea and blood leaked through. He seemed suddenly unable to form coherent sentences, and his lips twitched but no sound came through.

A moment passed, and another and another, until finally Pricilla placed a hesitant hand on his arm, and she was startled when his head snapped around to look fearfully at her, as if she had startled him first. Sucking it up, she forced him to draw back his hands, then he pulled away from her and looked at the mess in his grip as he place his hands in his lap. He absently pulled shards from his cuts and still no one said anything.

Quatre stood suddenly, mumbled something about seeing the nurse, and strode out of the room.

Quatre didn't go to the nurse. He trudged up to his room, ignoring the odd looks and the speckles of blood he left in his wake. He locked the door behind him and sat on his bed, and stared at the all across the room on Heero's side. He absentmindedly waited for the bell, and then realized that it wasn't a school day. Footsteps and voices on the other side of the door signaled the presence of his dorm mates, but he sought no company, even in the familiar ranks.

He grabbed his pillow and threw it against the wall, and then felt foolish on top of everything else. 'You're a mess,' he thought to himself, 'and you've done a lot of damage today.' Papers rustled as he rearranged his workload in his binder, but he set that aside for now. A clean sheet of paper and a textbook to back it lay in his lap, and he slowly but surely began to write.

"He's afraid of her." Zechs summarized.

"Ridiculous. He's faced worse than her. Even if she hurt him on a personal level, it would not warrant such an irrational fear." General Une was displeased with the effects of that afternoon's meeting. None of her goals had been achieved, in fact, it had been most counter-productive.

"Dorothy has a history of obsessing over targets. She doesn't take losing well. Quatre didn't have any problems fighting her and beating her in the war, maybe something happened after?"

"It's possible. But it causes problems for us. If people think Quatre will act irrationally around Dorothy, then he will be categorized with the others as insane."

Zechs sighed. "None of those boys is truly irrational. There's something we're missing here."

"Like what?"

"I honestly don't know. Did their initial consultation bring up any unusual points?"

The general laughed. "They didn't _have_ any 'initial consultation.'"

Zechs looked surprised. "They didn't? Then how are they dealing with the Wing Zero programming?"

"On their own, I guess."

Zechs rose with a purpose. "If they've not seen anyone about the Zero Programming, then that may just be what is causing them to act strangely."

"The Zero system can't be blamed for unusual behavior. Maybe a little post traumatic stress, but hardly a complete turnaround. And this is getting worse over time- how can something that happened years ago be accelerating."

"Because that's what the Zero system does."

"Zechs," General Une rose as well and placed her hands on her hips. "Why do I get the feeling that _I'm_ the one missing something here?"

Zechs drew himself up for a long explanation. "We did a lot of testing of the wing system during the war. On both sides. Near the end we started finding out more of what it does to the human brain. That's what enabled us to put Miss Catalonia in a large-scale impersonal operating system. She had a less focused point of interest, and some new protections for herself, so we were able to use her as a control set for further research."

General Une nodded to show she understood.

"But the fact that the shielding worked confirmed our worst fears of what the original Zero system was doing. And the only way to tell how much damage was done, and to fix it, is with through psychoanalysis."

"And what, exactly, did the Zero system do to those boys?"

"The zero system operated by supplying combat data directly into the cerebral cortex. And when running on full capacity, it, well, it kind of, left…some of itself behind."

"What?"

"It would imprint itself, and basically program the human brain."

**I would be much obliged if you would review. I would really like to see what people have to say after all this time. **


	13. Decisions Decisions

Quatre was happy.

Quatre was just, just _jazzed_ about the entire thing.

He had figured it out. He knew what they had to do.

Quatre cackled evilly to himself, patting himself on the back for a job well done. He made a few phone calls and felt even better. Then he rounded up his buddies, and told them his evil nefarious plot.

"This has officially gone on too long." Quatre told his friends. "And I for one am sick of it. It's time to stop accepting what we cannot change and start changing what we cannot accept."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Wufei asked him in a surly tone. "I thought you said that we couldn't even begin to fight this off until we were charged with something."

"It's all about timing. Back then, we really didn't have anything to work with. And up till now, we've been just sitting around and letting them build a case against us. But now I think it would be faster to build a case against them, instead."

Wufei didn't look too convinced.

"If we can prove that it's a waste of our time and the taxpayer's money, we can get away scott-free. First, we're getting our Graduate Equivalency Degrees. That proves that no one benefits from our being in school at all."

"Umm." Duo raised his hand like he was in class. "I already thought of that, 'cause that's the sort of thing people do when never really have a chance to go to real school. Back when we first got here, I asked the counselor for all of the info on the testing schedules. It didn't work out."

"Was there any documentation of the incident?" Quatre asked him.

"Huh?"

Quatre caught himself, and asked again "Do you have any material proof of what you were trying to do, and why it failed."

"Not that I know of." Duo shrugged. "I couldn't get my hands on anything to begin with. Why?"

"Hmm." Quatre pressed the back of his thumbnail into his lower lip, pondering something. "I may need you to try again, just as soon as I have a way of recording what is happening."

"You want to prove that they're getting in the way of our 'education'." Trowa deduced.

"Uh-huh." Quatre nodded. "It's just some of many rocks they've handed us to throw at them. We've got our severed communication lines, we've got loss of liberties and oppression of culture, heck, we may even be able to put Wufei up one the stand as a victim of sexual harassment."

Wufei and the others looked at him flabbergasted.

"-we should be able to try and blame them for loss of employment and lack of income, and to top it off, we may be able to spearhead an investigation into somebody's accounts and in hopes of coming up with mishandled funds." Quatre spread his hands wide. "With all of this at our disposal, we should be able to make it worth their while to let us go."

"You're forgetting that this is their alternative to prison. And with Heero's actions and all of our usual anti-social attitudes, we don't exactly look like model citizens. That's a fight we just can't win."

"Wrong." Quatre told him. "We, all of us, each have somebody, or several somebodies that should be willing to swear to being our friends. I'm willing to bet that there's enough confiscated postage for each of you to prove it, too."

"What about Heero?" Trowa asked.

"What about him? Quatre brushed it off. "He attacked a man who was known to be one of his greatest opponents during the war. They've fought numerous times in the past, and Zechs always gave as good as he got. If they brushed off us threatening Dorothy, they'd have to let Heero off easy for trying to kill Zechs. Trust me, the worst he'll get is assault and battery. If someone tries to call him dangerous, or even slap him up with a murder charge, we can sue the school for putting Heero, who they're obligated to protect, in the presence of a man who has honestly tried to murder him in the past. We can say it was a sort of self defense. Sure, Heero attacked first, but hey, for all he knew, Zechs was here to finish the job."

"Hey," Duo broke into a big smile. "I'm liking the sound of all of this. This could actually work."

"They sent us here to learn." Quatre told him. "And if there's one lesson our peers should have taught us, it's that if you don't like something, complain, complain, complain."

"For now, all we have to do is play along, keep our grades up, and stay out of trouble."

It was a more composed and collected Quatre Reberber Winner who sat before a large group of adults and contemplated his coffee. The same people from the other day were there, but they were all in a different room, this one small formal dining hall, because there was now the addition of two men in business suits, every teacher who currently had a Gundam pilot in their class, three of his oldest sisters, and more of the school guidance counselors. Quatre claimed one end of the table as his own, and he waited patiently for someone to start.

General Une ruffled her papers.

"We have discussed the matter." She said primly, "and have decided to allow you and the others the benefit of the doubt. Provided you are willing to submit to some basic conditions provided by the school board and the securities committee, no disciplinary action will be taken against your group for your violent actions of three weeks ago."

Quatre finished sipping his coffee and set it down. "I'm listening."

The same counselor that had been at the last meeting cleared his throat. "The faculty and staff are under the impression that your behavior was primarily the result of trauma induced by your experiences in the war. We are mandating that all five of you attend regular therapy sessions to alleviate your symptoms."

"I disagree." Quatre said. The entire room took in a breath. "But in the spirit of getting along, and for the purpose of proving you wrong, I see no reason not to. The others won't have a problem with it either." And that same collective breath became a group sigh.

"Do you know this for sure?" General Une asked. "Have you talked to them?"

"Not about this, no. But we function as a team."

They accepted that, but still looked uneasy.

"Next item." The General said. "You are to immediately halt and desist in your nighttime journeys off school grounds."

Quatre looked confused. "Beg pardon?"

"Don't play innocent." The Principal said. "We are well aware that at approximately four-ten every morning you exit school grounds for dubious purposes. You admitted as much at our last meeting."

"We never did any such thing."

The principal protested. Quatre made no move to halt his blathering, and instead waited until he was done to continue what he was saying before he was so rudely interrupted.

"The school owns the land for a mile and a half into the forest. While we were not on any part of the main campus, we were well within school grounds."

The principal gaped at him.

"We looked it up." Quatre offered by way of an explanation.

General Une took charge again. "I think we can assume that by "don't go off school grounds" that they really mean "don't go into the woods anymore."

Quatre nodded. "We can live with that."

"So you all will agree to no more sparring?"

"I never said that."

"Campus rules clearly state that fighting is an offence punishable by suspension." The principal said.

"We don't 'fight', we _spar_."

"There's no difference."

"Yes there is. There is a very big difference."

"I'd bet that the board is mainly cracking down on you guys going off campus. I'd bet if you started practicing somewhere more reasonable they'd let you continue." The PE teacher said. The principal gave him a dirty look, like he wasn't supposed to speak.

"I think that sounds acceptable." Said one of the board members in the business suits. "For liability reasons, you'd need someone to keep an eye on you. It would be like a club."

"Moving on." The General said. "You are hereby ordered to speak in a more accessible manner."

"Huh?"

"It's a matter of politeness, and a means of getting you all more involved with your peers." Said one of the counselors. "you lot have a habit of excluding people by talking in foreign languages. Now, we understand that you're probably very proud of your language skills, but the bottom line is that it's not healthy. And people tend to wonder if you're talking about them behind their backs of hiding something when they can't understand you."

"So just because the rest of the world is stupid, we're supposed to watch what we say?"

"Far from it. In fact, part of your rehabilitation will be having to make a conscious effort to speak out. Just do it in a language that all of present company can understand. Let your classmates in on the joke, share the gossip, chew the fat, etcetera etcetera."

"Hmm." Quatre didn't like it, but he couldn't object.

"Consider this training for real life." Said General Une. "You need to learn to get along with other people outside your little clique."

Quatre just continued nodding.

"We want you to get more involved, so we're asking each of you to join at least one club."

"What about lacrosse?"

"Yes, that's all very well and good, but you came to that as a group. We want you to consider outside interests."

"Which clubs do you want us to join?"

"You can choose."

"But we did choose. And we all chose none."

"But as individuals-"

"Each and everyone looked at what was available to us, and none of us saw anything of interest. We may have all decided the same thing, but we reached that decision by ourselves. Same thing with lacrosse; basketball was boring and football didn't really make any sense to any of us."

There was a moment where the adults considered this, and only the movements of coffee mugs was heard.

"If the boys are forming some sort of 'fighting club,'" the coach reasoned, "then that should count as another extracurricular activity, shouldn't it?"

"Some how I doubt that very many students are going to be willing to getup before dawn to get beaten up." Said the principal. "They will be just as isolated as before."

"So the club will take place later in the day." Said the General "Moving on." She shuffled her papers again. "You and the others are required to attend social functions and gatherings."

Quatre couldn't bite back a loud groan. "How did I know this was coming?"

"Surely you understand the importance of teaching your friends how to behave in such a setting." Une lectured him "You, I'm sure, would be perfectly comfortable in this particular situation, but the others would do good to take advantage of this opportunity and learn some class and refinement."

"What makes you think that they can't act classy and refined?" Quatre tilted his head in confusion.

"They've never shown any signs other wise."

"I could say the same about many of my classmates." Quatre said snidely. "But once again, you're forgetting that Heero lied and cheated his way in here, waltzed around sowing chaos and disorder, and sill everybody was kissing his feet, because they all loved him just that much."

She laced her fingers together and looked him square in the eye. "And I suppose you have some valid excuse to not acquiesce to our request?"

"Excuses? I don't give excuses. I give _reasons_." And he ticked his reasons off one by one on his fingers. "Duo has a girlfriend back home, Wufei's still in mourning over his late wife, I'm facing an arranged marriage, and Heero's repelled by large crowds. That leaves Trowa. Quite frankly, a quiet guy like Trowa would sooner shoot himself in the foot than suffer the embarrassment of singling out a girl, asking her to go with him, and then going through all the trouble of getting ready and actually attending."

"Chang was married?" someone asked.

At this point General Une put her forehead in one hand and said in a terse voice. "Do you plan on deflecting all of our conditions or are you going to actually _pretend_ that you have some sort of respect for this assembly?

"That depends. Are the rest of your conditions this ridiculous?" Quatre shot back.

Une didn't look like she was enjoying herself. Quatre felt a little bad for giving her such a hard time, and had to remind himself that she was probably only here because she was trying to help them by giving a commanders view on how to handle some wayward soldiers.

The principal took over reading to Quatre the list of demands. "While we're on the subject, it has come to the attention of the faculty and staff that three of your friends are not in compliance with the male dress code. Haircuts are mandated, and must be carried out expediently, or penalization will commence.

Quatre smirked to himself and thought 'there he goes again, trying to sound like he swallowed a dictionary.' That smile grew slightly when he remembered that he owed this man no such debt of gratitude as he did the General.

"You will be mandating no such thing." Quatre said simply. "The only way you would be able to legally enforce such a rule would be if we, like most of your students, had signed any of the usual paperwork upon admission to this school, promising that we'd obey your rules and such. However, as coming here was not anything that any of us wanted or intended to do, no such documents were signed." Yes, Quatre could act quite the little prince when he wanted to. "Further more, should you attempt to enforce such a ludicrous principal, legal action will be undertaken."

"Are you flat-out refusing to obey the rules?" principal seemed to puff up, and several of his peers were looking ready to jump out of their seats.

"You must realize what you are asking." Quatre said in his normal, even tone. "You want me to go back to our rooms and tell two of my teammates that they have to cut off personal features that reflect personal, religious, and spiritual beliefs that they've held since childhood. And then you want me to turn around and tell poor Trowa that he's not allowed to use his bangs to hide all those unusual scars anymore."

"You can't possibly expect anyone here to believe that Duo Maxwell belongs to a religion that _requires_ him to have hair going down past his waist! We just won't stand for this."

Quatre didn't so much as waiver. "Try me."

Une started to get up. "If that is all.."

"No, it is not all!" the principal was still glaring at Quatre. "Effective immediately, all of you are being assigned rooms with new roommates from _outside_ your little clique."

'He's bluffing.' Quatre thought. 'He has to be.' 04 scanned the faces of those present. 'Okay, so he's making it up as he goes. But from the looks of things, he's going to get his way.'

"If that's the way you want to play it, then fine." Quatre said, again haughty, even, and calm.

The principal shot him one last glare and checked his watch, calling out the time and 'meeting adjourned.

"I'd expect them to try and find some way of questioning the rest of you individually sometime soon. Especially you, Trowa." Quatre turned to look at the boy sitting on the bed with him. "General Une isn't trying to cause trouble for us, but she has a job to do, and a personal interest in figuring you out."

"Bah." Trowa waved him off. "She doesn't scare me, let her come. I don't have anything to hide."

"Sorry about the rooms, guys." Quatre apologized for the millionth time. "I probably should have been a little more agreeable."

"Hah! It's not your fault. And if my hair is what's at risk, I can put up with a lot more than a little thing like a new room." Duo tried to cheer him up.

Quatre still looked glum.

"Hey, its no big deal." Duo insisted. "So we get broken up. Its not like we're not going to see each other in class. We'll just divide Heero's things among us and remember that it'll all be over soon."

"Don't you think someone is going to notice that all of Heero's stuff disappears? Trowa asked.

"Doesn't matter." Wufei grumbled. "I'd be more worried about why Heero's still missing. Don't tell me that I'm the only one who noticed that he should have been back a long time ago. A little itty-bitty thing like a few broken bones never kept the Perfect Soldier down for very long before."

"For now we'll have to trust Une." Quatre was still glum.

Heero was still missing when the school was infested with non-denominational and non-religious holiday ornaments and decorations. Songs about winter and snow and 'peace on earth' were found in various media, and half of the population disappeared for several hours after classes let out for the day, flitting off to the mall like sugar-plum fairies.

The door to the men's room burst open, and was slammed shut once Wufei dove through it. He was pressed up against it and fearfully glanced around the room, eyeing the staring young men who were using the facility. They parted like the red sea when he sprinted across the room to the other side, and scrambled up the wall to the narrow horizontal windows that were near the ceiling. Against all odds, he managed to get one open and squeeze through, something that would have been impossible for most people, and had been much easier two years ago, before he had began developing such a thick layer of muscle.

No one moved to close the window after him, but one boy got up on his tiptoes and peered outside, watching the strange Chinese boy hastily retreat across the snowy terrain.

Towa was studying in his new room when the window opened from the outside and Wufei jumped in.

"It's begun." He said breathlessly. "_Phoradendron flavescens_! _Viscum album_!"

None of this rambling made sense to any of Trowa's three roommates, but the other ex-soldier dropped his books and his jaw in shock.

"We have to warn the others!" Wufei insisted, and then the two of them leaped out of the window. From the fourth floor. Onto cobblestones.

Trowa's new roommates dashed to the windowsills, but there was no sign of either of them.

The Principal called an emergency meeting, consisting of himself, General Une, and the lone Gundam boy who seemed to have been commissioned as liaison between the adults and the former terrorists.

"Let's make this quick." The General said when she strode into his office, looking mighty ruffled about something. "I do have other obligations and duties." She fixed him with a fierce look, one he tried to ignore. "What's this all about?"

"I have received several very disturbing reports all over school, and many are worried that the same insanity that gripped Mr. Yuy has taken hold in the rest of his little clique." The Principal said in a condescending tone. "And Mr. Winner here is going to tell us exactly what is 'going on'."

Quatre seemed to mirror the General's annoyance with this, he looked like someone had been ruffling his feathers, too. "It's like this. Wufei just isn't from around here, so there's bound to be some cultural differences and _misunderstandings_."

"Go on."

He seemed to be having some trouble finding words to express himself. "It's Christmas. Or the holidays, or what ever you want to call it. He isn't familiar with some of the customs and practices. Neither are the others, for that matter."

The general tapped her foot impatiently, towering over him from where he sat.

"Some girls…er…_presented_ him with mistletoe." Quatre glanced at their faces, but neither was catching on, other than the understanding of the culturally and seasonally intended implications. He had to enlighten them. "Mistletoe is poisonous." Again he glanced around. "I've used it myself, when I'm trying to make a death look natural, at least until the autopsy."

The General finally got it. "So he thought they were trying to poison him."

"He thought they were trying to poison him, get rid of him, so he trapped them all in their own lockers, fled through the men's room, and proceeded to round up the rest of you with tales of how the time had come for all of you to make your escape and head for the hills." The Principal said dubiously.

"Uh…yeah…pretty much."

The General buried her face in her hands. She sucked in a noisy breath, and her shoulders shook. She dissolved into giggles, and finally, unable to hold it in anymore, burst out laughing.

"It's not funny!" Quatre said, offended for the sake of his friends.

Tears began running down her face. She doubled over and had to grip the side of the Principal's desk to keep from falling over completely.

"And what about they others?" the Principal said over the loud guffaws.

"None of them made the connection to inane romantic practices either." Quatre said stiffly. "They were all ready to start pulling out too. I had to explain things to them."

This seemed to make it all even funnier, but before too long the General seemed to be coming to her senses. They watched her as she took off her glasses and cleaned them, still snickering and hiccoughing. "I can't wait to tell the gals at work about this."

"That's rather unprofessional of you." Quatre informed her

"Pish-posh. They all just want news of Chang, they consider him a friend. And I'm sure Sergeant Po will be delighted to hear that he sees foreign advances akin to death-traps."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Quatre said flatly.

She replaced her glasses and peered down at him, the barest traces of a smirk at the corners of her mouth. "I think it best that it stay that way, at least for now. But you see, we were right to send him here. You lot really need to learn how to behave in the real world." She squared her shoulders and marched out the door. Quatre glanced over in the direction of the Principal, then followed her out, and made his way back to the dorms, muttering about how none of this was really worth it.


End file.
